


We Are Stardust

by Unchained_Daisychain



Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, America, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Concerts, Hippies, M/M, Music, Outdoor Sex, Pining Paul, Recreational Drug Use, Summer Love, Woodstock 1969
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2020-06-02 09:05:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 28,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19438279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unchained_Daisychain/pseuds/Unchained_Daisychain
Summary: For one last chance to make the most of the decade, Paul and George drop everything for a weekend music festival in New York. Along the way they meet John Lennon and his mates, who make saying goodbye harder than it needs to be.It’s 1969. It’s Woodstock. It’s one weekend that feels like a lifetime.-His friend smiles at him. “Feel like you’re part of something big yet?”“Little by little, yeah.” Like the interstellar binding of dust and gases into a luminous star, maybe; or the slow and complex fusion of cells into a greater organism. Whatever is happening, Paul feels it unfolding at the tips of his fingers and spreading to the soles of his feet.





	1. The Day Before

**Author's Note:**

> I debated whether I should post this today bc I don't have as much of the second chapter written as I would like, but I'm going on vacation in a couple days and won't be able to post from there, so I just want to get this out here already. I don't read mclennon fanfics anymore, so I'm not sure if something like this has been done in recent years, but the idea has appealed to me for about a year and I fell in love with it. I've done a good bit a research and have added my own spin to things, so apologies if something is off.
> 
> I really hope y'all enjoy this one bc I've absolutely loved writing the first chapter. I've also linked a playlist that I used and one you can listen to as well. 
> 
> happy reading! 
> 
> [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5O1SoNhja50H5GarabKdxj?si=pAmtSfhWTpSEahGnzKLlpQ)

Thursday, 14 August 1969 

**10:07 AM**

Paul has long ago abandoned his sandals, because the grass is cooler and more forgiving beneath his feet. The blades stretch their arms skyward to soothe the sticky slits between his toes. He wiggles them and, when he looks down, a bead of sweat rolls off his nose. 

He squints out once more to the harsh New York sun. The lemon-yellow rays snatch his upper lip higher and shove his thin eyebrows together—pretty face screwed up like a coil to brave the summer heat. They’ve got miles ahead of them but even more behind them. The town sign of Bethel is off in the distance, mirage-like with the way heat dances off it. The lighthouse to their lost and searching ship. Cross that invisible demarcation and he and George will be at the home stretch at last. 

Caught up in his own musings, Paul doesn’t hear the zip of another vehicle passing by until he sees the smoky trail coughed up by the exhaust pipe. “Goddammit!” He folds his hands behind his head before tossing one out toward the road, impatient and irritable. “That’s the fifth fuckin’ car this morning!”

He whips around to George, hoping to see mirroring outrage. His friend has fallen a step or two behind and his moustache seems to nearly melt from his lips, but he’s as unflappable as ever. Their homemade cardboard sign is still held aloft in his hands, making him a walking billboard. One hand releases it, runs through the thick hair fanned out around his head, and surfaces with a light sheen of sweat. 

“Aye, and there’s prob’ly gonna be five more ‘fore we snag one,” George says, and Paul hates the finality of that statement. “You know how tough it was back home, well…this is _America,_ mate. Bigger cities and faster paces.”

Paul sighs.

When word spread through English streets there was to be a music festival in America, with some of the biggest names in music purportedly attending, they seized the moment. Opportunity knocks but never lingers, so they lumped together the money they had between the two of them and afforded two one-way plane tickets to New York. New York of all places! The epitome of the American way, with dignitaries and bums sharing the same street, everything quick and cutthroat and more beautiful for it. The cities materialized before them, two-dimensional, black-and-white prints they saw in the paper expanding into buildings that stacked and stretched beyond the clouds. Concrete mountains as breathtaking as any natural ones.

For the past two days they’ve lived out of rucksacks, the military type that made for easy pick-up-and-go travel. They only had so much quid to spend on cab fare and it lasted them well into the more spacious parts of the state. Closer to Yasgur’s farm, but not quite there. It’s scary, dropping everything you know to chase a bit of music and wanderlust. But with a guitar on your back you feel invincible…drowning in possibilities.

“You know,” George begins, dawdling to a stop, “I joked about us whoring out for dosh ‘round the big cities, but maybe we should’ve actually done it. Least we coulda got a little farther along in the cab.” His guitar case hits the earthy blend of grass and gravel on the shoulder of the road and soon braces the wait of George on top of it. 

“What’re you doin’?” Paul asks with a frown.

“We’ve been walkin’ for ages, mate. Festival doesn’t even start till tomorrow.”

“Yeah, but the whole point of getting there _early_ was to beat the crowd.” 

“And beat them, we will,” George assures him, shucking his flower-embroidered jacket from his shoulders and spreading it across his lap. “Soon as I ‘ave a bite to eat.”

Paul rolls his eyes but can’t resist a smile; he turns his head so George doesn’t have the satisfaction of seeing it. Even if he treats each meal as holy communion, the man is the best traveling companion Paul could’ve asked for. Funny, optimistic, clever, ready for anything thrown at him. And as passionate about music as they come—born with guitar strings for veins, a bass drum for a heartbeat.

As a station wagon chugs along past them without the driver even sparing a glance to his crooked hitchhiker’s thumb, Paul accepts defeat. He sighs and seats himself in the grass with clusters of dandelions surrounding him like a throne. How many of them would it take to grant his wish of catching a ride? 

“There’s a lad!” cheers George, passing him a smile and a biscuit. 

For a few minutes a companionable silence washes over them—the kind easy to come by after twelve years of friendship. Paul soaks up the sunlight, the burning of his cheeks only soothed by the occasional breeze. The short, layered cut of his hair is the perfect playground for this weather. He unfastens his blue paisley shirt one button further, now down to the fourth.

He looks down at his wrist. The faces of two different watches stare back at him, the second hands in a never-ending race. It’s early afternoon in Liverpool while the day is just beginning in New York. The hour and minute hands even flash him a deformed sort of smile. 

Traveling at twenty-seven is loads easier than traveling at seventeen. He doesn’t feel so much like he’s racing against the clock this go around. George helps balance him, remind him not to fall back into his old ways. As a teenager he bum-rushed life, afraid his clumsy fingers would never grip all it had to offer. Nowadays he accepts the fact that he may miss a few moments here and there, but with the right timing all the important ones fall perfectly in his hands.

He wants to savor every bite of this trip.

Feather-light, George’s voice drifts to his ears. “I can’t wait to see Hendrix live, man. Bloke’s on a whole other level.” He sounds dreamy as he stares out across the vacant stretch of road, like he’s already in the crowd experiencing every guitar solo he’s ever raved about. It’s a contagious feeling. 

Paul nods, smiling. “Yeah, that’ll be fuckin’ crackin’.” Nudging his mate’s foot, he adds, “Shankar, too, eh?”, because he knows how lit-up George gets over Eastern music, as well.

“Not even a question, is it?! The whole line-up’s got some brilliant groups.” 

“I can’t believe—”

“Oi! Look here,” George suddenly interrupts, chuckling and jutting his chin toward something over Paul’s shoulder, “the bloody sun’s coming our way.” 

Off in the distance from which they came, a pastel yellow Volkswagen van rolls down the hill. Artistic, variegated designs embellish the entirety of the vehicle, and Paul imagines if the sun were to drip from the sky and join the flower-power movement, it would look remarkably similar. At the sight of it, he perks up but doesn’t jump to his feet just yet. “You think they’re headed the same place we are?” he asks. 

George snorts, confident. “Gotta be, son. Gotta be.”

Every rotation of the tires brings the music pouring from the windows closer. Something acoustic and almost folkish, one of those tunes carried by The Band or Crosby, Stills, and Nash. It whispers of promise in his ear, but he still keeps his expectations low. 

“Yep, looks like they’re slowin’ down,” George says with a mouthful of biscuit, like the spectator of a roadside attraction. All in all, they do very little to make their presence known.

But sure enough, he’s right. The van bumps to a stop in front of them, in the middle of the empty road with its brakes squealing in protest. Open spring the doors, and a man emerges laughing and coughing as smoke billows out from behind him like the van is a mobile chimney flue. Round, wiry specs frame his glazed eyes. His hair hangs at his shoulders in sunkissed auburn waves that sway hypnotically as he asks them, “You two laddies wanna bum a ride?” 

The Scouse accent slaps Paul across the face long before the question does. He blinks a few times to clear away what surely must be a heat haze, a hallucination of some sort. But the bloke is still there—Saint Peter at the golden gates—and Paul is sat squinting up at him like a proper idiot. 

Shaking his confusion over this bizarre stroke of luck, Paul puffs out a surprised laugh. “Like you wouldn’t fucking believe,” he says, rising to his feet. 

“Yeah, alright, then.” George shrugs and joins him, casual as ever as he promptly gathers his belongings. “Anything to get off me bloody feet.”

An enthusiastic slap to the metal doors. “Jolly good!” Disappearing back into the smoky shadows of the van, the man shouts, “Budge up, ya peasants, we got company!”

Paul and George share one last look, then pile inside after him.

Every seat in the back has been gutted and replaced with bohemian-inspired pillows and throw blankets of deep reds and light browns. Sunlight pools onto the mahogany floor and spotlights the wisps of smoke that seem to constantly appear from thin air. “The Weight” croons out from the radio up front, voices lifting and harmonizing for the chorus, and Paul prides his musical ear for nearly hitting the nail on the head. 

They settle into the empty corner behind the driver’s seat (where the instant relief of AC is a godsend) with their bags shoved behind their backs for cushion and their guitars set off to the side. Excluding themselves, the van holds five other passengers in back and two up front. They’re an unfairly attractive group (and not a single one of them American, to Paul’s great surprise). A bloke with a sketchbook in his hand and a face so structured it seems carved from stone smiles at them. To the left of him two young birds, a blonde and brunette, sit close together and chat amongst themselves. Paul has his eye on the neatly rolled joint wedged between the blonde’s fingers. 

The van doors rattle noisily as they slam shut. Soon after, the scenery picks up speed and races past the windows in one giant blur. Rummaging a hand through his hair, the self-proclaimed gatekeeper lies back down with his head propped up on a duffle bag. Washed-out denim trousers encase his long legs. The matching jacket has been tossed aside, leaving him in a white t-shirt that hugs his waist and biceps. He’s so stretched out, so on show, that Paul isn’t really sure where to settle his eyes.

An elbow nudges Paul’s arm and vaguely he worries he’s been caught staring, but relaxes once he realizes the joint has circled its way around. The man beside him, large nose and short beard, grins. Eyes bluer than a robin’s eggs meet Paul’s own. A ringed hand, silver and gold and ruby glinting in the sunlight, proffers the joint—a modern day peace pipe. 

“Cheers,” Paul says with a nod. He squints as the smoke fills his mouth, sits cross-legged and comfortable on his tongue. It’s full and heady. The perfect sedative after days on his feet.

“Name’s Ringo,” the man tells him, and Paul laughs because it sounds like a joke.

“Hando just didn’t have the same ring to it?” he quips as he passes the pot off to George. 

A smile spreads across his face as he jokes back, “It was already taken.” 

With a deep, patient voice Ringo takes it upon himself to introduce the other members of this cozy circle in which they’ve found themselves. Names are dropped into Paul’s palms like spare change and he scrambles a bit to keep up with them. There’s Stuart and Astrid, the lovebirds turned dutiful navigators. Pattie and Maureen, with names as sweet as their faces. Klaus and John, artist and van-door guardian. Maybe if he remembers them in pairs they’ll all tack to his brain better.

“What about you two?” Pattie asks, her eyes bright and curious, but the whites of them webbed with red—a freeze-framed explosion. “What’re your names?”

“George and Paul,” George answers, pointing between them respectively. “We had shit luck flaggin’ rides this morning, so thanks for stopping.”

“We wouldn’t have if it wasn’t for the guitars on yer backs,” John says, slow and thick. Smoke plumes from his thin lips as his angular jaw juts out to narrow its shape. Lazily he curls his fingers through it, watches it bend and drift around them. “Didn’t even need to read your rubbish sign to know you were headed for Woodstock.”

“Wanted to beat the crowd, y’know,” Paul says, “but I guess we weren’t the only ones with that idea.”

Eyebrows raised, Stuart catches his eye in the rearview mirror. “Shit, man, you been around a radio lately? They say there’s chaps already filin’ in left and right up there.”

“But we are still making good time, yes?” Astrid asks him, with her lovely German accent Paul hadn’t initially anticipated. She has her feet propped up on the dash and one hand stuck out the window like she’s trying to catch the wind. 

“As long as John doesn’t make anymore unscheduled stops,” he assures her, loudly enough for all of them to take the hint.

“Spontaneity, Stuey,” John says. “Without it, our lives would be goddamn boring.”

The words resonate with Paul; they settle deep in his lungs despite the lazy delivery. Smoking always turns him introspective. One minute he’s unearthed the meaning of life and the next minute he can’t find the slip of paper on which he’d written it down. John’s words sound like they mean something, though.

The van chugs along down the road, carrying with it music and idle conversation. Paul slips further and further into it all, really gets on with this fascinating group of people. 

**11:38 AM**

“My Bobby lies over the ocean—”

“It’s Bonnie, John,” Maureen says.

“In my version the sailor’s a queer.”

Paul dissolves into laughter—doesn’t feel the uneasy quills in his gut that usually accompany such jokes—and a grin breaks out over John’s face as he watches him. 

The conversation has taken quite the nosedive from their initial, more intellectual debate over Bob Dylan. Mr. Voice of the Generation himself. They were all contemplating the reason for his absence at an event that surely seems right up his alley. According to Stuart, however, the man “owes this generation fuck-all” and never wanted such messianic labels in the first place. It didn’t take long soon thereafter for John to hijack the debate with an ironically woeful tune concerning the estranged musician. 

A lingering smile on his face, Paul picks up where John left off with, “My Bobby lies over the sea!”, and eventually has George’s strumming and a chorus of giggling voices backing him. They’re all so high and entertained and immersed they hardly notice the change of scenery….

“Oi!” Stuart shouts over the raucous, impromptu singalong. “We made it, lads!”

Like a switch has been flipped, their voices die down and everyone crawls to peer out the nearest window. 

Only one road leads to the Yasgur’s dairy farm where the festival is being held, and the entirety of New York seems to occupy it. There are people everywhere, like leaves blown in by a strong wind. A multicolored sea of flowing hair and fringed clothing. Paul has never seen anything like it in his life. He feels the same magnetic pull as them, lured by the tune of a pied piper who hasn’t even come yet. 

A shirtless guy with a curly afro and a girl on his back slaps the side of the van with a smile, then the girl flashes a peace sign at him as they continue on. Paul smiles back and waves his fingers at them, because he _gets it_ —that ineffable sense of belonging, that “everyone’s your friend” mentality. He’s loose-limbed from the pot and the camaraderie, and more ready than ever to join the crowd so many people love to hate.

“Shit,” Paul says quietly, curling a hand over George’s shoulder. “We’re here, Hazza.”

His friend smiles at him. “Feel like you’re part of something big yet?”

“Little by little, yeah.” Like the interstellar binding of dust and gases into a luminous star, maybe; or the slow and complex fusion of cells into a greater organism. Whatever is happening, Paul feels it unfolding at the tips of his fingers and spreading to the soles of his feet.

Deliberately Stuart eases them through the tight throng of bodies, threading a needle. With the majority of people being on foot, the van inches forward at a snail’s pace. But Paul isn’t as impatient as he was an hour ago. Still eager as hell, just more willing to let the feeling simmer a while. Warm him up from the inside out. 

He opens his bag and takes out the map they picked up at a filling station in the city. Securely tucked away inside, between the folds of town names and highway numbers, are a pair of tickets. Eighteen American dollars for three days of eclectic music. He handles them with the delicacy one shows an ancient artifact, despite them having not aged a day yet. They’re a roadmap all of their own. A roadmap for the soul.

“You bought tickets?” Pattie asks, with something akin to disbelief in her voice.

“Yeah…didn’t you?” But when Paul glances around quizzically, he notices no one else has brandished their own tickets.

Quiet snorts float around the van, completely passing over Paul’s head, and he feels like there’s some inside joke he’s missed. The feeling amplifies when Ringo asks, “You two haven’t been here long, have you?”

Paul cocks an eyebrow. “What makes you say that?”

“They’re gonna eat you alive, man!” John says earnestly, eyes sharp behind his specs. “Nobody owns music, alright? That’s everybody’s possession, and once you start dishing out dough for it, you may as well be paying for the air you breathe.”

He’s so adamant about it, speaks with the kind of conviction that draws crowds. Strong, impassioned. Convinces you he knows what he’s talking about even if he doesn’t. His words make Paul feel inexperienced and naive—a mere fetus in this grand womb of America. The two of them come from the same place but are somehow worlds apart. 

“Are all your Sunday sermons as enlightening as that one?” George quips, a van full of strangers clearly not exempt from his admirable gall.

But John doesn’t falter for a second; Paul starts to think maybe he never does. Firing off a wink, he jokes back, “For the righteous price of ten bucks, they can be.”

Finally they reach the entry and John crawls closer toward the front of the van, until he’s got his head poking over Stuart’s shoulder. His t-shirt rides up the slightest bit, revealing a bare strip of skin at the base of his back that Paul consciously ignores. The driver’s window creaks down and a hefty voice shoves its way inside. 

“You guys got tickets?” 

“Nah, mate, we got fuck-all,” John calls back. “Can’t you just let us in?”

“I let you in for free, I gotta let the rest of these cats in, too. No dice, man, sorry,” the guys says. Through the window Paul sees him—bushy-haired, bullet holes for eyes, and broad shoulders. Just the kind of person he expects to be helping operate this event. 

John turns back around to them, fixes his eyes on Paul. “How much you pay for those tickets?”

“Uh, eighteen a piece.”

His eyebrows shoot up as if jerked by a marionette string. “Eighteen a piece?!” he exclaims, then turns his attention back to the man to reiterate, “Eighteen bucks a piece, man, you hear that? We’re out here tryin’ to fight the system and you cats are out here backin’ it!”

“Look, man, we all gotta make a living,” the guy bites back, and Paul is a little surprised he’s still even entertaining this argument. He hears the impatience leaching into his voice, though. “This fucking venue costs an arm and a leg to run, we gotta make a profit.”

George cuts Paul a look, subtle smirk propped up in the corner of his mouth. To Klaus, he murmurs, “He always like this?”

Klaus chuckles softly. “Only when he’s passionate about something.”

Paul wonders how often that is. There are so many of those “for the greater good” types out there, the get them before they get me’s, that it’s difficult to distinguish sincerity from attention seeking. John seems like a genuine spirit, though—someone who wouldn’t waste his own time unless he thoroughly enjoyed doing so. And fervor is admirable when it’s put in the right place. 

John probably knows the right places.

“Well, we ain’t got the fuckin’ cash, alright?” he’s still explaining. 

“Not my problem, buddy, shoulda considered that ‘fore you made the trip.” His arm swings out to his right and, burning at the end of his fuse, he says, “Now you’re holdin’ up my line, so either pay us or fuck off.”

“Bleedin’ cunt,” John hurls at the man before he leans away from the window. In a quieter tone, he adds, “Punch the accelerator, Stu.”

Frowning, Stuart whips his head around to him “What?”

Louder now, affording no room for misinterpretation, he demands, “Hit the fuckin’ accelerator, Stuart!” 

There are roars of encouragement from everyone else—”Go, Stuey! Floor it!”—and suddenly the van careens forward, throwing John off balance and into Paul and George. They fly through the entrance, leaving behind an incensed ticket salesman and an equally rebellious horde of festival-goers. As far as protests go, it’s peaceful. They stroll through the entrance with grins on their faces like maybe this outrageous-looking van was onto something.

“Jesus Christ, John!” Stuart shouts, eyes shifting furiously between the farm and the rearview mirror.

John’s head is awkwardly shoved against Paul’s stomach, and Paul has a hand curled around his bicep from where he reflexively tried to catch him. He turns his face further into Paul while laughter carefree and boisterous bubbles out of him. It’s a ticklish sensation, vibrations riding up and down his side. John’s face is scrunched up—eyebrows thick and untamed, drawn on by an artist in a haste; long aquiline nose that looks like it was stolen straight from the chipped bust of a Roman emperor. For some reason, Paul feels like he has all the time in the world to stare. 

He swallows thickly, reminds himself they’re all still pretty stoned. 

“Yeah, laugh it up, mate,” Stuart gripes when John continues to paint the walls with his howling laughter. “The van sticks out like a goddamn sore thumb, you think we’re actually gonna blend in in here?”

Pattie waves her hand, the silver bracelets on her wrists tinging like windchimes. “I’m sure they’ll forget about us in no time.”

“Hang on to those tickets, though,” Astrid advices Paul, twisting in her seat to hand him a kind smile. “Great souvenirs.”

“Yeah,” Ringo laughs, “you can remember it as the day John Lennon got all his mates banned from Woodstock.” 

Still resting against Paul’s lap like they’ve known each other for years and not just a handful of seconds, John grins up at him. Wide and cheeky and something that whispers to Paul, _I can get away with anything._

**12:01 PM**

The stage is expansive and busy, technicians buzzing around the equipment and wires running along the floor like loose snakes. A jungle gym of scaffolding surrounds it, furthering the fantasy that they’re in one massive playground. Paul has never seen a setup so minimalistic yet professional in his life. It knocks him off his feet. Many concerts and music venues he’s attended, but none have ever had a voice as loud as this one. 

They park in a vacant area off to the right of the stage. Everyone climbs out of the van to shake the stiffness from their bones. As exciting as the road can be, it wears Paul down quick with a fatigue sometimes tough to lose. Like going to the beach and bringing home most of it in your trousers and under your toenails. He still has tire marks smudged across his brain and asphalt caked in his eyes. 

Paul stretches his arms skyward, grabbing for the sun and smiling when it grabs back. Once the scintillating stars clear from his eyes, he gives the land a good once-over. It’s bowl-shaped and seems to roll on forever. More people start to fill up the gaps around them, herding in like cattle. Farther in the distance some are even hopping the fence, everyone desperate to throw themselves into this musical arena as soon as possible. There are other vehicles, too—Volkswagen vans with less decorative flare and rinky-dink jalopies and trucks carrying people in the beds like cargo—which makes the one they arrived in seem only slightly less out of place. 

As its owners bustle around and share words of their game plan for the day, Paul exchanges a look with George. He cocks his eyebrow, tosses his head to some unspecified direction away from the others, and receives a nod in return. No words spoken. They don’t always need those.

By mutual understanding they begin to gather their belongings. Guitars, rucksacks, the baggage of laughter and memories they accumulated on the ride over. Purposefully, Paul takes his time because he doesn’t quite have the words to say goodbye yet. Isn’t sure he even wants to find them. 

They intend to slip away without much fuss. Paul doesn’t want to impose and doesn’t want to feel the pinch of rejection when they don’t further offer up their companionship. But they scarcely get their backs turned on them before Maureen’s urgent voice chases after them:

“Hey, where you going?!” 

Seven pairs of eyes land on them, and Paul feels the curious prick of each one. He feels like he’s been caught doing something naughty and hasn’t yet concocted an excuse for it. “Um…just—”

“You’re not leaving, are you?” Pattie asks. 

Paul hitches the strap of his bag higher up his shoulder, lifts the opposite one in a lazy shrug. “Well, um, you’ve all got, y’know, your thing and—”

“We don’t mind finding our own space since you lads already spotted us the ride,” George helpfully cuts in.

John swats their words away like they’re pesky winged insects. Stepping in between them, he slings his arms around both of their shoulders and steers them back into the huddle. “Bullshit, you’re with us now,” he says, words as solid as his grip. “We gotta stick together, us foreigners, eh?”

Paul chews on that. Shuffles it around in his head until he’s well-coated in it. He doesn’t feel like a foreigner, per se, here. Everyone is on the same wavelength, undulating together. Music on the mind—living it, eating it, breathing it. Even if you’re out of place, you still belong. 

But at the same time these people, the small tribe they’ve found themselves in, are their spitting images. What are the odds of them finding another home away from home like they have here? With accents that call back to their own like the echoes in a cave, life experiences that may not align exactly but are more likely to find commonality here than anywhere else.

“They’re thinkin’ too hard,” Ringo says. “I can see it.”

John looks back and forth between them, but settles his almond-shaped eyes on Paul. “Ooh, we’ll be having none of that now.” He squeezes the ball of his shoulder, and Paul can feel every impression of his fingers. “Don’t think when you’re around us.”

Stuart snorts, arms crossed and figure leaned casually against the van. Thick, dark shades shield his eyes now, making it difficult to tell if he’s actually looking at Paul when he says, “Can you tell we don’t do it either?”

He breathes a laugh regardless, but prefers not to stick his foot into the bear trap of that question. “Alright, we’ll stay,” he tells them instead.

So they stay. 

They stay and Paul vows not to fret or worry and sure as hell not think about it. He just basks in the warmth of their grins, bright enough to boot the sun right out of the sky.

**3:15 PM**

The sky is filled with white ballooning clouds, so high up they look light years away from them and this dusty old field. Paul prefers it that way, wants to be light years away from _everything_ for a while. He strums his guitar with the sun in his eyes, fingers picking out some melody both familiar and foreign. They’ve always had a knack for surprising even himself. 

It’s late afternoon and he wonders what he’ll be doing this time tomorrow—who’ll be on stage, what conversations he’ll be having. He still hasn’t entirely fathomed the fact they made it here; like waters at low tide, the realization is slow to overwash him. With all of their hiccups and forks in the road, his optimism had taken quite a few blows. Punch-drunk and bruised. But by God, kismet had twirled her glittering gilt wand and now they were exactly where they needed to be.

At the sound of a mechanical click, Paul’s eyes blink open. 

“You are a photographer’s dream,” Astrid utters with her camera lens aimed at him like the business end of a revolver—ready for fire. She’s sat between the open side doors of the van and with so much surrealistic art surrounding her it looks as though she’s been swallowed up by a painting. Imbedded in the colors; viewer and participant all at once.

Paul bats his eyelashes, playful. The shutter sounds like the snick of a lighter as it clicks again, capturing the moment. Astrid laughs sweetly and it replaces the melodic strumming he has ceased for the time being. 

“My brother would disagree with you there,” he tells her. “He loves photography, too, but says I never sit still enough.”

“Sometimes the blurry pictures are the best ones.” Her words lose their pace towards the end as she focuses and steadies the camera for another picture. The camera is a Pentax, one of those new models Paul knows Michael has been saving up to buy for some time now. He doesn’t know his cameras quite like he knows his guitars, but if his brother wants it, it must be top notch. “Life is in constant motion, so I find it amazing if you can capture that in something meant to be still.”

Paul loves the way she says that. The accent, the shimmer of modesty in her blue-green eyes, no camera lens between them—just the intrinsic, arcane sense of understanding that tends to flow from one artist to another. 

Before he can even formulate a response, Stuart walks over from where he’d spent some time talking to John. His emerald green shirt is unbuttoned completely and hangs loose around his naked chest. Those distinctive shades shove his messy, dark hair back. There’s a Poean mystique about him, something awe-inspiring yet dark. 

It fascinates Paul.

“Astrid, darling, we could use an extra pair of hands at the tents down there,” he says, tucking a golden tress of her hair behind her ear. “They say there’s sandwiches n’ stuff. We wanna grab some ‘fore they get gone.”

She nods, thanks Paul for the chat and the photos, then flits away with Stuart. Her long, flowing cardigan sways in the wind as a final wave of a hand goodbye. It escorts his attention to George and Pattie, rising to their feet as they hear of what the others have planned. 

From where they are the smatterings of tents at the opposite end of the farm look ages away. Paul can see their pointy yellow tops and is skeptical of just how much food they’ll have so soon. An hour or so ago, word had spread that the peeved townspeople had set up a human roadblock to prevent anymore “freaks” from pervading the area. Little deters people from their music, as it turns out, because the smart chaps simply parked their vehicles and walked around it. So now the place is truly starting to fill up.

“Paul, ‘m gonna go with, alright?” George calls to him. 

He nods, gives him a thumbs up. George has always been able to find a home in the unlikeliest of places, and it seems he’s done it yet again. Doesn’t even bat an eye before following their footsteps, Pattie close by his side.

Aside from himself, they leave behind Ringo, Maureen, and Klaus, all lounging in the back of the van. And for the first time Paul feels like an outsider. Cross-legged in the grass and looking up at them like they’re the act he came to see. The feeling doesn’t settle well with him. 

He gets up. 

Even without the engine or AC running, the back of the van offers a pleasant respite from the heat. Paul decides to shuck his shirt entirely and welcomes the summer air—fresh and grassy in more ways than one with the dank stench of marijuana still wafting about—against his bare chest. He sighs blissfully.

“Glad to be off your feet?” Ringo asks around the cigarette tucked between his lips. When Paul first met him, the man was sporting nearly as many layers as George, but has since similarly stripped down. His mottled orange shirt and sangria colored trousers are all that remain. Paul notices the van beginning to more closely resemble a closet with the amount of stray clothes strewn everywhere.

He smiles and gives the sole of his left foot a sympathetic squeeze or two just at the mention. “Like you wouldn’t believe, man,” he says, laughing a little. “Did all of you come down together or did some of you hitchhike, too?”

“‘Fraid you and your mate are the only ones.” A wisp of smoke sees the words out.

“Well, no,” Klaus interjects softly, “there was that one guy—”

“Oh, right, right! The broodin’ fella.” To Paul, he clarifies, “There was this bloke we picked up on the outskirts of Middletown. Real smug-looking chap, y’know, but he was so goddamn boring that we didn’t even realize we’d left him at the filling station till we were ten minutes up the road without ‘im. Poor bastard.” 

Maureen frowns, picking her brain. “Patrick, was it? Or Pete or some such name?”

Ringo shrugs. “That’s me whole point. Just wasn’t a memorable bloke.” Quickly he amends, “I still feel like an arsehole for it, of course, but we all had a damn good laugh about it.”

A smile has grabbed hold of his face, and Paul can practically see it in his eyes—the story played out. The dejected expression of an abandoned traveler. The roaring laughter of a group who has only just noticed they’re down a man. The whole scene is right there in Ringo’s striking blue eyes.

“Well,” Paul finally chimes in, “‘m glad we’ve managed to keep yer interest, then.” 

Ringo cocks an eyebrow, tilts his head. “It’s not that so much as we ain’t got anywhere to drop you now.”

“Fuck off,” he laughs.

“It was John’s call, picking you up,” Maureen tells him. “He’s the one who had his sights on you first. There’s no changing his mind once it’s set on something.”

Paul thinks on that, imagines John with eyes peeled like a bombardier for any bushed and begging pedestrians on the roadside. It’s funny, but not as tragically funny as _being_ one of those pedestrians. “I guess we owe ‘im one, then.”

“Just offer to blow ‘im, and I’m sure he’ll call it even.” Ringo grins at his own joke, then shakes his head. “Nah, s’all done in love here, mate. Peace and love.”

The motto of the generation. Paul smiles.

After a brief lull in conversation, Ringo pulls out a deck of cards and sets up a game of poker for the four of them. There are scantily-clad women on the backs of the cards, pin-up girls like those in the naughty magazines he used to covertly drool over in the muted light of his bedroom. He remembers the day when their trim waists and large breasts no longer did much for him. Sixteen was a confusing age. 

The van’s radio gets switched back on and they listen to the Stones playing devil’s advocate with a jungle drumbeat and scandalous lyrics. It’s an anarchist’s lullaby. They use a boxy suitcase as a make-do table for the community cards and ever-growing pot—mainly they ante cigarettes, any loose change in their pockets, and Ringo even offers up a golden ring cradling a small ruby just for a laugh. But they don’t take the bets seriously. Nothing lost, nothing gained. Everything shared.

While Paul studies his cards, the Jack of hearts and ace of spades, he listens to Ringo jovially reminisce on some of his past exploits with card-playing. He’s a captivating raconteur, keeps Paul’s interest no matter how preoccupied he is with his next calculated wager. 

“I’m a good gambler with a bad poker face,” Ringo says, winking at him like he’s letting him in on a secret.

Paul thinks it’s probably the sad, droopy eyes; they’d make even the best of hands seem like a total bust. As for himself, Paul isn’t quite sure where his luck lies with gambling. He’s never considered himself a betting man, never had a reason to take a risk. Coming to Woodstock has been his greatest gamble yet.

Smiling proudly at her boyfriend, Maureen boasts, “One time in Manhattan he won a drunk’s car.”

“Course I didn’t actually take it from ‘im. Was just for kicks.” Ringo flips over the next card. It’s a three of diamonds, sliding in alongside the Jack of diamonds, six of hearts, and nine of clubs on the suitcase. 

“So you live in New York, do you?” Paul asks. 

“Yep. We all share a flat in the city. Been there…two years?” he says uncertainly, turning to Klaus for confirmation, who nods and flicks a penny into the pot that they all have to call.

“Yeah, just about.”

A legion of questions and curiosities still occupy his mind. But there’s a sharp wolf whistle, and Paul turns to see the others returning with John leading the pack. “Did I miss the strip tease?” he asks loudly.

“Just in time, actually,” he jests back, once he remembers there’s more of himself on show now. “You get half now, half after I eat.”

John tosses him a wink and a sandwich wrapped up in wrinkled, transparent plastic. “Eat up, then.”

Paul snorts quietly and budges over to make room for him and the rest of them. The cards get set aside as everyone assumes the habitual circular formation, more than ready to stoke up after an intense morning. They all get a simple ham and cheese sandwich—the go-to meal when a loaves-and-fish type of miracle is needed—and Paul decides in advance to save half of it for later, when the mass will have devoured any leftovers.

He peels off the thinly sliced cuts of ham and drops them back onto the wrapping, and John makes a noise of protest beside him. “You wasteful sod. What’s wrong with that meat?”

Lazily, Paul shrugs a single shoulder. “Just that. It’s meat…and I’m vegetarian.”

“Hm, I woulda pegged you as more of a Catholic.”

“Republican, actually, but don’t tell this crowd. They’ll have me hide.”

John breaks first, his cheeks lifting into a smile that pulls Paul along with him. And then they’re just grinning at each other like pie-eyed idiots. Paul notices with wild fascination how John’s eyes match the fiery brown of his hair in the right lighting. Burning, he looks away first.

In the end he passes off his scrapped meat to John, which doesn’t come without its own share of immature jokes. They eat fast and talk slow. Everyone’s humor clicks and it all feels a bit too perfect. At some point, as they’re filing back out of the van, Paul’s eyes land on the discarded playing cards, all flipped face-up. The Jack of hearts would’ve snagged him the win. Three of a kind.

 _Maybe I should start taking more chances,_ he thinks.

**7:46 PM**

The sky is periwinkle and lilac, bleeding together like spilled paint. It’s its own stage in a way; the long stretches of clouds an amorphous, silhouetted audience to this blistering performer of a sun. Paul feels like he’s watching some far away concert, at the isolated back of the crowd.

In the water, muddy and still and barricaded by the trees, people splash around with flailing movements. It wasn’t too difficult to spot the pond, backdropping the stage that sits at the bottom of the bowl-shaped landscape. Back here most people roam around naked, like children who refuse to be toweled off and clothed after a bath. There are topless women and bottomless blokes. Tan skin and pale arses. Paul can’t even view them with lustful eyes anymore, just admires the overt beauty of the human body. 

He’s watching a couple cut through the water hand-in-hand when John plops down in the grass beside him. For a while no words are spoken. It’s quiet and comfortable. Then Paul settles his forearms over the tops of his knees, and John taps the identical watches on his left wrist curiously. “You that bad at telling time that you gotta wear two watches?”

Paul smiles and wonders if his cheeks will ever catch a break from it around John. “One’s for here and one’s for home,” he explains.

John nods. “Ahh. And where exactly _is_ home?”

Paul turns to him with a frown. “Liverpool. I thought you could tell it.”

“Yeah, no shit,” John laughs, bumping their shoulders. “I mean _where_ in Liverpool.”

“Oh,” he chuckles shyly. “Grew up in Allerton.”

“Who’s waitin’ for you back in Allerton?” He gestures back to the watches. “Or do you have to be back home in time to take a roast outta the oven?”

Paul snorts a quiet laugh, then teases, “You’re a nosey one, huh?”

Leaning in closer, he whispers, “Maybe you’re just an interestin’ one.” 

Narrowed and searching, John’s eyes shift between his own. There’s no telling what he’ll find. Much of Paul is laid bare, and his eyes—those goddamn eyes are so large and expressive that he can hardly ever hide a thing, and it’s like John already knows that’s his greatest vulnerability. 

Paul cocks an eyebrow, adamantly holding the gaze. “Am I?” 

“Dunno. Haven’t figured that one out yet.” John sighs deeply and looks back out at the water. His profile is stunning, everything strong and angular. “You’ll be the first to know when I do.”

And Paul desperately wants to know. He can’t quite explain this urge to impress, to be liked and respected by John. They’re strangers, people still collecting pieces of the other with every interaction. There’s just something radiant about him, though. The way the sunlight catches the tips of his long hair like he has something it wants to steal. That kind of warmth is solace to a lost and freezing soul.

Shaking his head, he answers John’s initial question. “S’just family back home, y’know. Da’ and brother, mainly.”

Paul plans to ring home sometime during his trip to let everyone know they landed safely, but he wants to make sure he doesn’t call in the dead of night. Jim McCartney didn’t take kindly to the news his eldest son was flying out to America with his childhood mate to fulfill some wild musical dream. Saw it as a waste of time and an inevitable letdown. But Paul had grown weary of his mundane life and the odd jobs he worked around Liverpool. The 60s had already flown past him—days filled with labor and ineffectual romantic flings and more labor—and he has less than a year left of the decade to play catch-up. He can stomach the disappointment in his father’s voice coming down the telephone line as long as he knows it’s untenable. Because so far, Paul is having the time of his life.

Maybe he’ll just mail a postcard instead. 

“You sound like a headline I’d read in the paper, man,” John chuckles, shaking his head. “Man with two watches abandons family in Liverpool for dirty hippie orgy in the States.”

Paul laughs loudly, freely, and sort of demands, “What’s your headline read, then? Sounds to me like we’ve got the same one.”

“Nah, nah,” John lightly protests. Then, thoughtful, he hums; Paul waits him out. “Man who never had anything leaves Liverpool in search of everything.” 

He scoffs, nudges John’s arm. “You’re biased, you are. You make your story sound far more exciting than mine.”

“You want something _more_ exciting than a _dirty hippie orgy?”_ John asks incredulously, eyebrows high, and Paul just laughs with a half shrug. “Alright, how ‘bout _you_ write me a headline, then. What’s the big story of Paul…?” 

He hangs onto the name for a second, unsure of how to finish it until Paul helpfully supplies, “McCartney.”

“Paul McCartney.” Leaving John’s lips, it actually sounds like it means something. “What’s his story look like?”

But Paul doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want a headline life. The fact John could so quickly and easily slap a summary on his life niggles at the bottommost part of his mind and bothers him immensely. Headline news is always boring news, and Paul doesn’t want his life to be so easily summed up in a single sentence. He wants convoluted language and evocative detail. Something a page is too afraid to hold. 

Despite it, he wants to keep things moving. He leans back onto an elbow, settling lower to the earth to get a better sense of himself. He genuinely thinks about it. Thinks about who he is and who he wants to be. But he’s still not entirely convinced it does him justice when he says, “Man drops everything for rock n’ roll and another shot at living.” 

His eyes seek out John’s for approval and, fortunately, they find it. “Well, you’ve certainly come to the right place. Land of infinite possibilities, mate.”

Paul believes it. He hasn’t even long been here, but he can smell it in the air…wild and lyrical. “Valhalla,” he says softly, dreamily.

John smiles at him like he has divulged some mystic, ancient secret. With a vibrant intensity, he pushes at Paul’s chest until he tips over into the grass giggling, and declares, “Val-fuckin’-halla!” as though he’s about to dine with Odin himself. The abrupt change of pace is intoxicating as John jumps to his feet. “Alright, up, up, McCartney!”

A faint smile still lingers on Paul’s lips, even as he frowns up at him. “Where we goin’?” 

He gets jerked to his feet by a strong hand, insides shaken up in the best of ways, and then John is steering him along with an arm wrapped around his shoulders. There’s a smirk on his lips, steadily growing familiar. “A bloke with two watches should know better than anyone when it’s time to get stoned.”

**11:41 PM**

They foolishly wait until close to midnight to pitch the three two-person tents stored away in the back of the van. Paul is more than willing to spend his night under the inky sky conversing with the stars, but doesn’t want to seem like a shirk for not helping. Not that all of them _are,_ though; Stuart, Astrid, and Klaus have already settled down in the back of the van amongst the blankets and duffle bags. There’s probably room for a fourth to bunk with them, but the doors are already shut and don’t appear to be opening until sunrise. 

Having already set up their own spread with impeccable speed, Ringo and Maureen offer their assistance to George and Pattie. That leaves Paul to tend to John. A case of the blind leading the blind in this thick veil of night, despite Paul having learned over the day John has far worse eyesight than himself. They’re both road-weary and creeping towards that point of exhaustion where everything is playful without cause.

“Feels like I got me eyes closed, can’t see shite.”

Paul makes a grabbing motion for the pole John still has yet to spear into the ground. “Here, gi’ us that.”

John gasps and hums and clutches a string of nonexistent pearls. “Ooh, he’s such a scout, he is! Big strong manly man!”

“You just stand there and look pretty, doll,” Paul says, affecting a deep, Hollywood hero sort of tone. 

After much trial and error and frustration, they get the thing standing. It’s precarious and sloppy and could very well go barreling through the farm at the slightest gust of wind. But dammit if it isn’t a home away from home! Satisfied, Paul sighs as he admires their work.

Next to them, George finishes up helping Pattie and bids her goodnight when she wraps her painted fingers around his wrist. “George, I’ve got room in mine,” she offers, meek in manner but strong in suggestion.

He turns to Paul, who notes just how difficult it is for him to tear his eyes away from her. “Paul?” he asks, as if he needs permission.

“G’wed, mate,” he tells him anyway, winking.

George smiles at him, gratitude pouring from his eyes, and disappears into her tent. Ever since the lad set his sights on blonde and petite Pattie, Paul hasn’t seen him much for the latter half of their day. But he wants his mate to have his share of fun. And anyway, he gets it. 

He’s had his own host of distractions as it is.

“Paul, there’s room in my tent, too,” John calls in a mocking falsetto, head poked out of the dark red flaps of the tent. _Just like I found him,_ Paul thinks. He laughs despite the curl in his stomach over such an implication…playful though it is.

“As tempting as that sounds,” he answers, unrolling his patterned quilt across the hard earth, “I think I’ll stick to the bare elements here.”

John shakes his head and crawls into the tent, but his voice rushes back out. “Paul, just swallow yer pride and get in the bloody tent, you wanker.”

He stares down at his quilt, his mind conjuring up song lyrics in his head. “ _Swallow your pride, you will not die, it’s not poison.”_ But then he realizes it’s not pride holding him back. It’s fear. It’s fear and it’s a toxin that _chokes_ because it refuses to be swallowed. Even Dylan couldn’t tell him what to do about that one.

Paul notices John isn’t begging; he doesn’t expect him to. Why would he?

He tries to reason himself through it: _you’ll be out here on your own; there’s no telling how many bugs you’ll ingest; what does it make you if you stay put?; something even more reprehensible than if you go in?; a coward?_

Before Paul realizes it his head is ducking into the shadows of the tent, quilt dragging along behind like a tucked tail. John lifts a single eyebrow as though he’s surprised, but it quickly drops back down. He has his glasses off and his clothes in a pile next to him, trousers included. He’s still in his t-shirt, with a blanket thrown across his legs and one arm crooked behind his head. Paul thinks about turning around and crawling right back out of there.

But John has already made a spot for him. Like he _knew_ what Paul would do, _knew_ Paul is a man who thinks and thinks until his thoughts run drought dry. A man who, now, has no choice but to fill the empty space left for him.

He sits up to drag his shirt over his head, hesitates, thinks better of it but realizes it’s too late to change his mind without drawing attention to it, and then swallows anxiously as he hauls it the rest of the way up his chest. When he finally lies down he tries not to feel claustrophobic. But there’s no air in here except for their own…hot and measured. 

“Nice of you to join us,” John murmurs, because he’s a cocky bastard, as Paul is steadily learning.

“I knew none o’ you sorry sods would save me if a pack of coyotes attacked me in the middle of the night.” 

“Yer not wrong. I sleep like a log,” John says, turning on his side to face him. “Ye’d have to get your boyfriend to rescue you.”

“My boy—” Paul rolls his head back with a laugh. “Yeah, no, he’s useless, he is.”

A lazy smile curls onto John’s thin lips. “I’ll say. Not even a full day and he’s already gone n’ deserted you for Ms. Boyd.” 

Paul sighs, shakes his head glumly. “I’m gutted. Really, I don’t know how I’ll go on.”

In all actuality this is no news to him. He’s noticed the glances, the subtle touches. Most of Pattie’s questions have been directed at George, and most of George’s responses come with that enamored glint in his eye. _Don’t get attached,_ Paul wants to warn him. _We’ve only got them for a few more days…._

“Reckon you’ll have to find someone else.”

The corner of his mouth lifts faintly. “Guess so.”

Around them there’s the chitter of nighttime critters, the quiet conversations between other night owls, distant music and laughter. But it all seems miles away, beyond their reach. John’s eyes are warm and hooded, shadowed by long, fanning eyelashes that keep in all of the stories Paul sees in them. All of the headlines of his life. And they’re still so close and it feels like he should do something about it—swing the pendulum this way or that.

_Don’t get attached._

“I told you to stop thinking,” John tells him, soft-voiced.

Heart tapping out a quick tempo, Paul blinks twice and lies, “‘M not.”

“You are,” he argues assuredly. “Your forehead gets this little crease. Right…,” he reaches out his index finger and gently touches the space between Paul’s eyebrows, “here.” 

A single chaste stroke and the touch disappears. 

Paul swallows. “Yeah? S’that mean you been watchin’ me?”

“Like a hawk,” John whispers.

“Ever since you picked us up, huh? Or so I’m told.”

“Well, you were just so darn pretty.” 

The knot in Paul’s chest unravels at the cheeky tone. “Oh, sod off—”

“Somebody woulda picked yer sweet arses up and pimped you out on a street corner if not for me. You should be thanking me, really.”

“But seriously. Why’d you do it?” Paul asks, because he wants to know; he doesn’t know why he wants to know—why it’s important. He just does and it just is.

“Why’d you get in?” John questions instead and lets it hang in the air for a moment. But he seems to answer both of their questions when he says, “Adventure loves adventure. Wouldn’t you agree, Paulie?”

“I’d be a fool not to, Johnny.” He says it just to be cheeky, to match John move for move in these verbal chess games. Really, though, it intrigues him, the things John says. The man turns ideas on their heads and calls that right side up. Every word from his mouth is a hook waiting to be bitten, and Paul keeps on biting. 

It’s quiet again. Paul is all too aware of their propinquity again.

John’s eyes cut to Paul’s lips, a split second that probably didn’t even happen at all, then he sighs, long and soft. “Now, c’mon, yer bein’ a bad bunkmate, keeping me up. Off to bed with you.”

Paul laughs half-heartedly and watches John turn over onto his opposite side, facing away from him. His shoulder blades are prominent through the thin cotton of his t-shirt, as are a few knots on his spine. Mountains and ridges, America mapped out right there on his back. He curls halfway into himself like a child. It’s an interesting contrast to his brazen and boisterous daytime self. Where does all of that personality go when he closes his eyes?

“G’night, John,” Paul speaks gently into the night and receives a perfunctory hum in response.

He rolls over onto his back and crosses his hands behind his head. His mind lists and reels like a wooden ship at sea. Now that John is asleep, he figures he can get away with it. He thinks about adventures and the big yellow vans that carry them. Thinks about blurry photographs and the Jack of hearts and starlit farms where bodies are flowers, swaying and bowing. 

It’s the summer of no inhibitions. The summer of infinite possibilities. Three days of peace, love, and music—and Paul wants a slice of it all.


	2. Day One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> when I was in the brainstorming stage of this fic, I always told myself I'd do about 5k words per chapter. but look where we are now. 
> 
> sorry it takes so long to update, but it really takes time for me to pump out this many words for each chapter if I want them to be decent lol. thank y'all for the comments on the first one, glad to hear everything feels so immersive. idk what else to say, it feels like I've been editing for hours and I really just want some lunch rn
> 
> happy reading!
> 
> oh, and things start to move quick in this chapter since everything only takes course over 5 days!

Friday, 15 August 1969

**10:42 AM**

Paul wakes up to the sound of helicopter blades dicing up the air and a voice steamrolling across the land from the speakers. In the middle of a hazy dream he half-thinks it’s an air raid like the ones adults prepared him for as a child—massive birds of prey flying overhead with metal feathers and bullets for talons. It isn’t the pleasantest of alarm clocks, and there’s no telling just how long the commotion has been going on, but it has him peeling his eyes open, nonetheless.

Muted light seeps through the red nylon of the tent, the bottom of which is damp with morning dew. The two of them have moved closer throughout the night. Paul has a leg thrown over John, who is still somehow sleeping through the noise, and John’s hand is a loose fist just a hair away from Paul’s stomach. He can count every freckle on John’s face spread out like miniature sun-kissed islands across all the lines and curves. They’re just as easy to get stranded on.

“You always watch people when they’re sleepin’?” John mumbles, voice thick and sandpaper rough; it’s a sound he definitely prefers to hear first thing in the morning. 

“Doesn’t sound like yer sleepin’ to me,” Paul says smartly, instead of attempting to deny it or defend himself. Truthfully he should probably feel more embarrassed than he does, but there’s nowhere to hide in a tent this small.

The corner of John’s mouth lifts into a half-smile as he slowly opens his eyes. “You always this perceptive?” 

“Only in the mornings.”

“Don’t expect it after twelve, then?”

Paul smiles. “Definitely not.”

It feels too easy, feels like he shouldn’t be this comfortable with someone so soon. With this nomadic god he encountered on his journey to the vast unknown. But here he is, with a leg that hasn’t been shoved off yet crooked over John’s while they banter back and forth as though they’re picking up where they left off somewhere a lifetime ago. Two halves finding each other again after so many years. It shouldn’t be this easy, but it is.

“What’s it like?” Paul asks wistfully after a lapse in more lighthearted conversations. “Living in New York?”

“Lotta walking. Hafta keep yer feet in good shape,” John jokes with a smile and a nudge to his foot. But the smile slowly fades as he continues: “It’s a fucking living and breathing contradiction—beautiful and ugly, heartless and sympathetic—but I dig it. It gets me.”

“What does it get about you?”

“The loneliness.” The words fall from his lips so casually that Paul’s heart breaks a little. They hang in the air like death in the throat, and, effortlessly moving past the corpse, he asks, “You gonna give it a go?”

And Paul isn’t even sure you can follow up such a heavy statement with that question—isn’t even sure you can have a moment of such utter realness so soon in the day. They need starlit skies and hands of watches that point their fingers to the empty night. Instead they have helicopters in the piercing morning sky while they speak words so deep that his soul grows heavy-eyed, and John looks too soft and silhouetted around the edges to be joking.

“I don’t know yet,” Paul answers, just as seriously.

“You should.”

But he hasn’t planned that far ahead yet. He wants to live moment by moment, snapshot by snapshot—that much he does know. After Woodstock he doesn’t know where the road will take him, he just wants to be happy when he gets there.

Eventually they muster up the energy to greet the ashen morning sky and everyone else underneath it. The field has come back to life. People amble around with no clear direction in mind; lost children of the earth, eyes glittery and feet dirty, who wait for music to shed its guiding light. The air is thrumming, the entire country rumbling with the rise of a revolution.

On stage a man shouts into the microphone, but can scarcely be heard over the whipping chopper blades. “I’m gonna _quit!_ Cause the fucking helicopters, I can’t get a fucking piece of _dialogue_ at _all,_ man,” he rants and raves like a madman. “I’m hangin’ around blowin’ my brains out.”

“What’s all this?” John asks, eyes to the sky. “They gonna shut us down ‘fore it even starts?”

“Hitler is back with a vengeance,” Stuart quips, for which Astrid smacks his arm. (At least Paul isn’t the only one with atomic warfare on the brain, though).

Chowing down on his leftover sandwich from yesterday, George informs them, “They’re flyin’ in performers and supplies ‘cos traffic is shit.”

And Paul can see why. There are nearly twice as many people as yesterday and still they keep coming as if by the busloads. He wonders if there is anyone left in the rest of America or if they’ve all migrated here—the place where it’s all happening. 

“Well, if I don’t hear some music soon,” John threatens as he lights a fag, “I’ll be demandin’ a bloody refund.”

Pattie rolls her eyes, but she has this glow about her that Paul wonders if George had something to do with. “You didn’t pay,” she tells John.

“Oh yeah,” he murmurs with a smirk, because of course the cheeky bastard didn’t forget yesterday’s moment of madness. That wonderfully disastrous madness that will lead them who knows where today. 

“Guess these instruments are just firewood, then, eh?” Paul says and grabs his guitar from the back of the van with quiet eyes following him. 

He makes himself comfortable in the grass with his guitar cradled in his lap. She’s a beat up old thing, but he treats her like a queen. Gently tickles her strings to hear her melodious laughs, each different in pitch than the last, and turns the pegs until she’s perfectly in tune. 

“You’re playing that thing upside down, mate,” Stuart chuckles. “You a lefty?”

“No, I just like the way it sounds this way ‘round.” 

A smirk props itself in the corner of his mouth. With the itch to perform crawling up his spine, he gives her a couple of strums, then puts his all into a melody that sounds like threads of gold unraveling from the strings.

George smiles and stuffs the last bite of his sandwich into his mouth before jumping up to grab his own guitar. The song is hardly a month old, but George always rushes at any Clapton project, almost as though he’s in competition with the musician. Seamlessly he eases into the lead parts like he’s sliding into a pair of old reliable shoes, and everything feels like home again. For one solitary, untouchable minute it’s just the two of them and their guitars. When Paul closes his eyes he’s back in the tiny dining room on Forthlin Road, strumming his heart out to an audience of cheap china while George matches him chord for chord. 

But then one by one new voices trickle into the harmony— _“And I’m wasted and I can’t find my way home”—_ and when he opens his eyes again he’s in a verdant, rolling American field with close to one hundred thousand people encircling him but only seven of them listening. 

It’s enough.

Paul smiles, scans his eyes over the faces. Ringo drums out a rhythm on the tops of his thighs; Klaus moves his mouth minimally while his eyes settle on some indistinct spot above their heads, watching the music undulate; John, loudest voice of all, constantly locks and unlocks gazes with Paul like they’ve been singing across a microphone at each other for years.

That _happening_ feeling takes hold of him again—grips him and shakes him and refuses to let go. There is something ineffably magical in the air that he could probably taste if he just licked his lips. This song was written for him, this moment was made for him, this world _belongs_ to him, and the selfishness of it all is so overwhelmingly delightful.

He locks eyes with John again. The smile on his face slowly recedes the longer he stares at Paul…just staring…and it’s amazing how one look simultaneously dwindles and intensifies into an emotion so strong that giving it a name would only weaken it.

It’s a good morning.

**1:23 PM**

“Your hair color really makes it pop.” Maureen plucks another yellow daisy from the small pile and tucks it into his hair. “It’s brilliant.” 

Running his hand through the grass, Paul teases, “My last barber said the same thing after he nicked me ear,” and a triad of giggles glide like swans across the water. 

He’s pleasantly stoned and letting the girls adorn his hair with wildflowers by the pond since someone still has yet to take the stage. A festoon of yellows and whites and purples encircle his ebony hair like the celestial lights in a bottomless night. The girls are all so fair-skinned and lovely, reminding him of simpler times when he could lay all of his troubles across his mother’s lap as she stroked his head and untangled them like twigs from his hair.

Smiling to himself, he sits patiently while the garden grows.

“Paul, tell me about George,” Pattie says after some time. 

She’s been doing little to help the other girls. Her knees are bent under the white lace skirt spilling like sea foam around her while she absentmindedly chains and unchains a string of daisies. Now Paul can see to where her mind has been drifting for the past few minutes.

“What d’you wanna know about ‘im?”

“I don’t know, just…has he got a girl back home?” She sounds troubled; concern trickles into her voice, the fear of competition.

“No,” he says, aiming to offer her some sense of relief.

She clicks her teeth impatiently. “Well, what else should I know?”

And…that just feels like an impossible question. Hell, how can he even begin to describe someone when nothing he could possibly say would do his friend justice? Sometimes the gentleness of a person’s spirit is easier felt that spoken. If Paul were to lay her slender hand upon his chest, then she could feel every answer to every question right there beneath her palm.

“He can hail a cab without even stickin’ his fingers in his mouth. He shares everything he has even if it leaves him with nothing. He follows every daft scheme you have and doesn’t take the piss if it goes to shit. And all that’s just been in America.” He chuckles, shakes his head. A few feet away George lounges in the sun with his eyes closed, and Paul’s heart expands with love for him. “You should know that you’ve got yourself something good.”

“Aww, how sweet,” Astrid says as she places another flower in his hair.

“It must be the company I’m in,” he says with a wink. “You girls are rubbing off on me.”

Lightly Maureen slaps his shoulder, grinning. “You’re such a flirt, you are. Surely _you’ve_ got a girl waiting for you somewhere, yeah?”

“Yeah…,” he answers quietly, “waiting.” 

Waiting, waiting.

All they ever do is wait, because seldom does he search.

Luckily no one questions him about it, because suddenly Maureen is calling, “Oh, John! John, come have a look!” and waving her hand as he passes by with grass stuck to his wet feet.

Eyebrows raised, he veers closer to them with a smirk lifting his lips. Hands on his hips and eyes on Paul, he teases, “Ohh, what a pretty little flower princess.”

Playfully Paul dips his head, flutters his eyes. It’s stupid. 

It gets a smile from John. 

“You missed a spot, though.” He squats down and puts a hand on Paul’s knee to steady himself. Paul holds his breath while he watches John carefully pick up another flower and thread it between his hair. The smell of summer clinging to his clothes and breath is intoxicating. With gentle fingers he pushes around the hair by his ear, makes sure the hold on the fragile stem is secure, and Paul’s brain is split between deciding which touch to focus on—the grip on his knee or the hand in his hair. “There,” John murmurs softly, meeting his eyes, “now he’s a proper flower child.”

When he smiles the flowers in Paul’s hair prickle at the warmth of it. 

_He’s the sun,_ Paul thinks idly, probably for the fifth time since they’ve met. 

“Alright, your turn, John!” Astrid says enthusiastically.

He clicks his teeth, finally returning his hands to himself to run one through his hair. “Sorry, girls, but me hair’s allergic.”

“Oh c’mon,” Paul coaxes, a challenge shimmering in his eyes, “be a man and get your flower crown.” 

John is still squatted so close to him that when their eyes lock again Paul sees every shade of brown, darker than the last, in his irises. Drowning, drowning, his breath vanishes again. John looks back at his mates by the edge of the water like he’s considering rejoining them. But then he looks back at Paul, sighs, shakes his head, and fully sits in the grass. 

Paul grins boyishly and pats his arm. “There we go!”

The minute he stands up, however, John frowns at him. 

“Oi!” he shouts. “You just wanted me here so you could slip out, you git.”

“No, I’m comin’ back, don’t worry. And here,” Paul finds another flower, a white daisy with a single petal missing, “I’ll even get you started.” He holds the right half of John’s middle part back before sliding the stem between the auburn strands. John’s eyes roam his face like he lost something in his smile or the arch of his brows, and Paul seriously considers staying to finish the job himself.

But he doesn’t. Instead he shoots John a wink before turning his back to them.

“You better come back!” John shouts after him.

Feet weightless and mind swimming, he’s floating on air as he walks away. By the time he reaches George he’s surprised he doesn’t need a pair of lead boots to bring him back down.

“Someone’s been enjoyin’ ‘imself,” George says, like he can see the clouds in his eyes.

Chuckling, Paul spreads out in the grass beside him. He isn’t entirely sure what he’s high on anymore, maybe life itself. “Man, it’s great here, innit?” 

“Yeah, feels like time has stopped or something,” he says, smiling up at the sky. “Or like no one else exists, and it’s all just us here.”

Paul sighs and closes his eyes. “I don’t wanna leave, Georgie.”

“Well, we don’t have to yet. Still got a few days n’ all.”

“Yeah,” Paul says, but he hopes time keeps stopping. He even contemplates throwing his watches in the pond just to force it to; he hates having a constant countdown on his wrist.

“I think I love Pattie,” George says, apropos of nothing, but in a way it seems like a fair trade. A confession for a confession.

His laughter is tame at first, but quickly bubbles and bubbles until Paul is clutching his stomach, barely able to get out, “Ya don’t—ya don’t love ‘er, mate. S’too soon to tell.”

“Well, I don’t have long to figure it out, do I?” He only sounds mildly defensive. “Might as well just love her now rather than miss the chance to love her at all.”

It only takes a handful of seconds for Paul to sober up at that. He nods, doesn’t really know what to say. Only that he wishes he had that much courage, wishes the fears of rejection and humiliation weren’t such crippling ones. But he isn’t so sure he can do it—pick up something fascinating and new only to put it back down a few days later when he has to return to the same old same old. 

“What about you and John, then?” George asks in his silence, because he can probably see the names and concerns drifting out of Paul’s ears in jumbled clouds.

“What _about_ me and John?”

“Oh, c’mon, mate,” he laughs, “‘m not blind. And even if I were, I could still see there’s something there. The way you look at him, the way he looks at _you.”_ Certainty flickers in his dark eyes like candlelight, so stark that Paul can’t even pretend George doesn’t know something. “Don’t bullshit me.”

Paul rubs a hand over his forehead. “I, uh, I dig him.” He shrugs. “I don’t know, it’s complicated.”

George looks at him skeptically, _knowingly,_ one eyebrow lifted. “Is it really, though?”

He sighs.

No. It’s not. 

It’s as simple as he put it and that’s the complicated part. Paul _wants_ it to be complicated, goddammit. Paul looks for reasons why it _should_ be complicated. But in the end his mind always trickles back to one thought: _I dig him._

“No,” he murmurs, and hates to finally admit it.

“Exactly. _Nothing_ here is complicated.” George crosses his arms behind his head and looks back at the sky. “And I don’t know about you, but I’m gonna make the fuckin’ most of it.”

Paul looks over at John, cross-eyed with his tongue pushed against his lower lip while his flower crown steadily grows thicker. He laughs quietly and shakes his head.

_Nothing is complicated._

Next to him George continues: “You don’t have to be afraid to tell me anymore, y’know. We’re best mates, Paul. Nothing changes that.”

As a teenager he once tried to make a move on George, thought the energy fizzling between them was invoking action from him. But George jerked his head back and abruptly left his house. Paul vomited in the sink, banged his fist against the wall in hatred of himself and George and life itself. When his friend inevitably returned to apologize, Paul had found _himself_ apologizing too. Not for the attempted kiss, but for the way he was.

_Queer, queer, queer!_

These days the lump in his throat is more of a pebble rather than a boulder, easier to swallow. Whether or not he feels comfortable discussing it, he’s accepted that part of himself. Has even had his share of flings here and there, though nothing steady. Then again, is there even any guaranteed happiness for people like him?

Pulling himself out of his head, he says, “John said I should try staying in New York for a while.”

“We gonna do it?”

A smile can’t help but slowly form at the _we,_ at how casual George is about this sudden drifter lifestyle they’ve adopted. Together the two of them could tear straight through America, he’s sure of it. 

One of the flowers falls from his crown and onto his lap. He picks it up, mutters to its petals, “Maybe.”

“Not like we got the money to go home anytime soon,” George points out, “and it’d be something different, yeah? I been bloody dyin’ to get outta Liverpool. What’s there for us anyway?”

Paul can tick off an entire list of things, but he doesn’t want to get into it again. His problems are bisected by the ocean—Liverpool troubles are in Liverpool; American troubles are in America and as of right now unforeseen. What’s there to be done about any of it?

“I’ll think about it,” he settles on.

A smile draws across George’s lips as though it’s being pulled by a string. “Or don’t.” 

“Ta, Georgie,” Paul says, and hopes it covers everything.

**5:07 PM**

Richie Havens finally takes the stage.

But just before he does, while a handful of shirtless men rearrange the placement of a circular dais on stage, one of the announcers gives everyone a small lecture about the "poisoned acid" that has been circulating around and how it is _not_ in fact poisoned, but "if you wanna experiment, just take half a tab."

Paul has seen a few places where they can buy some—men sitting outside their camps with cardboard signs advertising acid for a dollar, some even dealing it out for free just because it’s so abundant. They haven’t picked any up yet. It’s been a while since he last tripped, but he can’t think of a better place to do it than here.

“See, he gets it,” Ringo says, pointing his cigarette at the man on stage. “It’s always, ‘Don’t do drugs, kids,’ it’s never, ‘Do your drugs responsibly, kids.’”

“We should’ve brought our own stuff,” Stuart says. “Wouldn’t have to worry about this laced, synthetic shit.”

“So we’re not gonna trip?” Pattie asks, a shade of disappointment in her voice.

John snorts. “Nobody said that, did they? Just drop at your own risk.”

Suddenly the crowd erupts into thunderous cheers as they rise to their feet like dominos being picked back up one at a time. With a mind of their own Paul’s legs have him standing too. He bites his lip, excitement a whirlpool in his stomach.

Havens walks out like a lit match, donning a fiery orange robe that stops above his ankles and exuding a heat Paul can feel hundreds of feet away. The people at the foot of the stage must be sweating buckets. Electricity crackles through the air, sparkles through his chest like a string of firecrackers. Finally, after hours of anticipation, they’re about to hear some fucking _music,_ and Richie and his bandmates waste no time in delivering. 

Paul’s face lights up at the first song and the irony it carries with it. Fitting a smile around the lyrics, he nudges John’s arm as he sings along, “ _Looks like Handsome Johnny with a musket in his hands, marching to the Concord war.”_ Over the thump of the music he tells him, “Very first song and it’s just for you!”

John ducks his head closer, smirking. “Handsome Johnny, eh? S’that really what you think of me, Paul?”

Emboldened by the drumbeat, Paul matches him move for move, speaks right by his ear, “I just don’t think Ugly Mug Johnny woulda fit the rhythm as well.”

“Oi, I’ll have you for that!” John waves a fist at him that instantly unfolds into an outstretched hand. 

Smiling, Paul takes it and madly they go dancing and spinning around the grass like a pair of tops. He hangs on for dear life, keeps his eyes on John’s because they’re the only constant against the smudged edges of his periphery. His heartbeat synchronizes with the bass; the music runs in streams of quicksilver through his veins. But everything tunnels, plays from a long and endless hallway, when John shoots him that crooked smile. He twirls Paul under his arm, pulls him back in with the arm wrapped snugly around his waist—so close the breath between them is shared, so close Paul doesn’t know where he ends and John begins—and the hand on his back slides lower and lower, bold and curious, until it disappears altogether to snatch up Klaus next. Off he goes again, a flash of a wink, leaving Paul breathless and staring with his bones still buzzing.

The sun and Paul’s eyes track him like a spotlight. All this time he’s waited for music, only for John to steal the show during the very first song. So wild with one hand in the air, reckless like a cannonball yet graceful like a butterfly. One by one he trades through the girls, so lovely with their flowing hair, sweet laughter, and glowing skin. With great fascination Paul notices a smile grow on the lips of every new partner John takes, and it’s a feeling he knows all too well.

It seems like everyone in the world should be dancing and rejoicing. Only when John stops can they too rest. 

He catches Paul’s eye and scoops him up again like a derailed train that keeps making stops. Spinning, spinning through their friends—spinning, spinning across the universe. Every time John gets his arms around him, he can’t control the toppling of his stomach and the freedom of his joy; it’s that moment when you’re running downhill, against the wind, and for every breath it robs you of, it repays you twofold. One second he feels younger than ever before and the next he feels older than he’ll ever be again. 

“You’re insane,” he shouts, even though insanity, to a degree, seems to be a requirement at a place like this.

John grins, his soul shines through his teeth. “You love it!”

And God help him, he doesn’t even try to deny it. 

Paul has always fallen in love with a certain type of madness. Unpredictable yet calculated is the magic of John’s madness. A contradictory madness. A madness that appeals to all. A madness for the masses.

After what feels like only a handful of seconds, the song slows to a stop and the roar of the crowd is one gigantic wave that oversweeps the stage. Still clinging to Paul in a messy hug, as though he’s thrown off his own center gravity, John smothers a smile into his dark hair. Paul claps and whistles, laughs some more, and leans just as heavily into John. 

His cheeks hurt from smiling.

A few songs later, John climbs on top of the van—sitting cross-legged on the sun so comfortably it would put Icarus to shame—then waves Paul up to follow. He grabs the side of the ladder but trades it for the hand John reaches out for him. Before he sits down he stands there on top of the yellow mountain, feeling like within a single step he could be in a neighboring country; but then he’s small again, minute—a mere ant who has conquered the bump of a hill and still hasn’t even seen the ankles of the earth yet.

He notices John staring up at him, eyes warm as melted honey. He sits down beside him with his legs hanging over the edge of the van. There’s still plenty of room for a few others, but the group stays on the ground…they stay next to each other.

“Look out there,” John says, glancing back over his shoulder at the bodies that seem to multiply for acres and acres. He’s quiet for a minute as he takes it all in. “Is that not the maddest fuckin’ thing you’ve ever seen?”

 _Not the maddest,_ Paul thinks. 

What he actually says is, “Crazy.”

“When I was a kid I always thought I’d become a household name. Like Elvis, y’know.” His eyes scan the heads in front of them, an audience who, Paul knows, is facing the wrong way. “Crowds of people just like this one with their eyes on me. Just turned out to be John Lennon, though.”

Paul frowns. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Well, I hear he’s a no-good loudmouth who runs around with a guitar and a chip on ‘is shoulder all the time.” He shrugs, smirks. “But personally I’ve never met ‘im.”

“Well, I have and he’s not so bad.” He bumps John’s shoulder, smiling. “Especially if you happen to prefer no-good loudmouths.”

“That right?”

He nods, feels the air thickening around them in a way he knows he caused. Woodstock makes him too bold for his own good.

“Careful now,” John murmurs, low and thick. “I’d hate to have to kiss you in front of all these people.”

Paul chuckles softly, almost wistfully. His eyes fall to John’s rosy lips and his lungs offer their last bated breath as he says, “That’d be a shame.”

“Aye.” He sighs and looks back out at the concert.

Disappointment floods Paul’s body in biblical proportions. Either something needs to happen already or the suggestion of it happening needs to vanish completely. Because he’s on the verge of loosening the reins on his impulsivity and letting it gallop wherever it may.

How the fuck is he going to stand two more days of this?

When he looks back down he sees Astrid is turned around and grinning, camera aimed at them as they chat. They lock eyes and she winks, secretive. Not for the first time Paul feels like he has been caught doing something wrong.

 _You see it too?_ he wonders. _Do all of you see it? Is that what has the crowd on their feet swaying and cheering?_

Desperately he wants to see the prints of her photos and catch a glimpse of everything passing between them. Pictures guaranteed to be blurred to her perfection with the atoms that vibrate and zigzag around them like confused ants. He wants to keep one in the folds of his wallet for days when courage feels like an estranged friend. With the plastic cool and familiar between his fingers, he’ll remember the moment where he not only sat on top of the sun, but _beside_ the sun, and understood nothing of the word impossible.

The music fades back into his ears.

On stage Richie’s robe sticks to his skin in sweaty splotches. He bows over the guitar, strumming furiously, the music bending and contorting his body as his face twists like an exaggerated theater mask. It always amazes Paul how music can make the most solid of men become malleable—can blend the line between pleasure and pain so smoothly that they appear one and the same.

 _“Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,”_ he chants into the microphone in a gravelly wail. The lyrics are pulled from a deep, unreachable place within him, some of the passion even borrowed from the hollow pit in Paul’s gut. A hole only a mother can fill. The hammer of Richie’s words strike the rusted nail of the memory over and over, driving it deep and painful into Paul’s brain. 

The blood, the liquid thought, must be streaming from his ear for John to read, because he stares at the side of his face for a long minute before asking, “Where’s mummy, Paulie?”

“What?” he asks, face carved in hesitance, in case he misheard. In case he’s projecting his own thoughts into John’s mouth. In case this whole goddamn adventure has been one intense fever dream.

“Your mum,” he repeats. “What happened to ‘er?”

His brow creases. “How’d you…?”

“There was someone who wasn’t waiting for you back home.” He nods towards the music…towards the reminder. “And now the song.”

“Oh,” Paul breathes, like he should’ve known it was that simple to figure out—should’ve known John is more of a perceptive bastard than he gets credit for. “Yeah, she, um…she died.”

“How old were you?”

“Fourteen.”

“S’a fuckin’ drag, innit?”

Paul frowns at him. “Is yours—?”

“Yep. At seventeen.”

He nods. 

And that’s all they say about that. 

No condolences, no explanations, no dwelling on it. 

Paul is grateful for it. He doesn't know how John lost his own mum and doesn’t really want to find out. Some twisted part of him is relieved they share such a heartbreak, though; it’s so coincidental that he wonders if it’s yet another requirement of entering this Promised Land. Insanity and motherlessness. But the whole reason he came here was to forget those tragedies, hoping he could scatter pieces of them along the American soil and return home with clean shoulders.

“Now look at us,” he can’t help but add with a mirthless snort. Because here he is, Mary’s boy, neglecting a respectable job and hitching to a New York hippiefest only to meet folks who were right under his nose at home…being drawn like a magnet to the problematic ringleader, obsessed with his blue and sparkling Roman candle soul. “What would they say?”

Lazily John shrugs a shoulder. “I don’t much worry over that. Way I see it, you’re always gonna disappoint someone, so you might as well satisfy yourself.”

“What _do_ you worry about, then?”

“Dope, sex, and music. And I can get all three of those here, so what’s there left to worry about?”

 _Happiness, money, acceptance—_ but he abruptly cuts short the laundry list in his head, because at least he doesn’t have to worry about it right now. There’s always time to worry about worrying about it later.

“Fair enough,” he mutters, and turns his attention back to the concert. He has missed most of the performance.

Richie has started to wander off stage, now at the end of his song, but keeps strumming like there’s fire in his fingertips. Sweat covers him as though the passion of his playing summoned a rain cloud over himself and no one else. Farther and farther away the music carries him. Paul expects him to ramble straight off into the horizon like a cowboy in a western—just a man and his guitar. 

After his set an announcer takes the stage again to inform everyone that it’s a free concert from now on. The audience hollers their appreciation, hands shooting up into the air like flares. 

John stands up on top of the van, cups his hands around his mouth, and shouts, “Only took you two fuckin’ days to tell us!”

He gets some laughs and agreements from the people within earshot, looking up at the maniac preaching from his yellow soapbox. And below them George even shouts, “How ‘bout givin’ us a bloody refund, then!” accompanied by a loud stomp from John.

Paul tugs on the leg of his jeans until, satisfied, he plops back down beside him. “Bloody hell, you should really meet this bloke named John Lennon,” he says, shaking his head with a wide smile, and John wraps his arm around his shoulders, grinning. “He’s somethin’ else.”

**8:35 PM**

The sky is surrendering to dusk when Paul follows John to the pond. He doesn’t know where they’re going or what to expect; John never spoke a word to him. Silently he had ventured away from the group and only turned back to toss his head for Paul, and Paul alone, to follow.

Now he’s leading them to some area even more secluded than the pond—somewhere off in the shady trees. Anticipation rolls and hardens like a ball of wax in Paul’s stomach, though for all he knows it could be nothing. But then John will glance back at him, as if to ensure he’s still following, and give him a slow once-over before placing his eyes ahead again.

And every time Paul will think, _Something’s happening._ Or else, if not, he knows with a fierce certainty that he wants it to.

John leans against a wide trunk and taps out a single fag that comes sliding from his pack as though by sheer command. Another tap and he offers one to Paul, who welcomes the distraction. For a few minutes they smoke in silence with the faded music of Bert Sommer winding through the trees and catching on the leaves. Eventually Paul realizes it’s up to him to speak first. 

The tension is palpable, a cold hand on the back of the neck.

Clearing his throat, he starts with little preamble. “So, um, this summer I’ve kinda promised myself that I’ll start taking more chances.” John looks at him with quiet eyes. “I’ve…I’ve already left home just for this concert with no idea what I’ll do after. I’ve already got into a ridiculous van with no idea who was inside it or even where it was _goin’._ And now….”

“Now I’m another chance yer gonna take.”

Paul swallows a breath, nods.

_With no idea if you’ll break my heart._

“Okay,” John says simply. He stubs out his cigarette against the tree, blows the last wisps of smoke right by Paul’s face, and flicks it to the ground. “Take your chance.”

Paul almost falls into his old ways again, almost questions John and the decision he’s about to make. But the bending boughs of the trees smile crookedly with encouragement and the faraway water smells of reckless opportunity and summer love—a fragrance he wishes to bottle just to remember this moment and this year—and when he moves, he moves by the plea of nature.

He curls a hand around John’s hip as he slowly leans in. Their lips hover over each other, barely touching, like bees above a flower. John’s breath caresses his face and the hint of cigarette smoke has him aching for another taste of the nicotine—wanting to wrap his lips around John’s tongue like another fag. 

John’s thumb strokes his cheek, wanders lower to his mouth, and brushes over it. Eyes slipping shut, Paul parts his lips more until the tip of it edges into his mouth. In teasing circles he runs his tongue over it, savoring the tangy taste of rich dirt and rolled joints, then closes his lips around the first knuckle. In sweet mimicry he slowly slides up and down and opens his eyes to see John watching him with a burning gaze.

There’s a flicker of heat in his eye that melts the wax in Paul’s stomach, spreads it slow and thick through his veins. Then suddenly John presses him against the unforgiving bark of the tree and kisses him—frenzied, deep, filthy. Kisses him like he too has grown impatient with their tiptoeing around each other, all whispering touches and teasing eyes; kisses him like the world is on fire and he’s the one who burnt it to the ground. 

The abrupt change of pace dizzies Paul in the most intoxicating of ways. He cards a hand through John’s hair to ground himself, and the auburn locks glide between his fingers like water. A hand sneaks its way under his shirt and up the length of his side, feeling him out like a block of clay while his quivering muscles shape themselves into the mold of his palm. Higher and higher up his shirt rides, until the bark from the tree, standing tall at his back like a spectator, digs into his skin with its brown fingernails. 

There’s something about being in the open, only scarcely shielded by the dusk, that turns Paul on even more. Anyone could walk by and see another man’s hand up his shirt, another man’s kiss on his lips, and he could probably still get away with it. 

As Paul subtly grinds against the thigh wedged between his legs, John’s hand slides across his stomach and to the waistband of his trousers. Panting against his lips, he watches him slip his fingers beneath the loose fabric and into his underwear. Leisurely they dance over his hard-on, like John is feeling out his length—his entire pulsating being—with barely-there touches. 

Paul leans his head back against the tree, eyes closed. Soon after, febrile kisses trail up and down his neck, while, with the thumb Paul slickened himself, John rubs over his tip. Then he spits into his hand and wraps it around Paul’s cock, and Paul breathes his name like a prayer as he gets him off in slow strokes that steadily gain pace. Every twist, every squeeze brings him closer and closer to the edge. And no longer does he hear the music or the water or the people. Paul understands that they all _know—_ and now they’re all putting everything on hold while he and John take this urgent moment just for themselves.

“You’ve been driving me fucking mad,” John whispers into his ear, teeth pulling his earlobe.

Paul moans, bucks into his tight fist. “Same here, arsehole.”

They fall into another heady kiss.

He’s so, so close. Focusing on John tugging at his lower lip, his hand sliding up and down his cock, his breaths sounding just as labored as Paul’s despite not even having a hand on him yet—

“Oh fuck,” Paul whispers, and then spills across John’s hand. He arches back against the tree, and it feels like more than just becoming one with nature. It feels like becoming himself _through_ nature, feels like kisses soft as flower petals laid on his jaw from John’s lips, feels like lilac and distant rain on his skin. 

It feels like one of the first looks John ever gave him: _I can get away with anything._

Moaning softly, he relishes in the kisses John tacks to his skin as he comes down. When he opens his eyes the vibrancy of yellows and greens around him rush back to his sight. But he nearly comes a second time when he sees that John has a finger in his mouth, sucking off Paul’s spunk with a sinful want in his eye. 

Voice low and thick, he murmurs, “Gonna give us a hand, love?”

“I’ll do you one better,” Paul says, smirking, and sinks to his knees.

There’s an appreciative moan above him as John steps back only slightly to give him more room.

A gnarled root drives into Paul’s right knee—because he’s still deliciously trapped between John and the tree, and they’re _still_ out in the open—but he ignores the discomfort as his hands pop open John’s fly. 

He pulls his cock out of his jeans, and…he’s never blown an uncircumcised bloke before, but of course John would be the exception. Of course John would continue to surprise him and stand out as something exciting and special.

A hand swims deeply into his hair, encouraging, and Paul’s eyes flutter closed. Holding John’s cock by the base, he takes him down in one slow slide, cheeks hollow and lips tight. A blissful sigh spills over him like rain. Through the thick fan of his lashes, Paul looks up to see John watching him with heavy eyes.

“You’re gorgeous,” he says with a sort of breathlessness, like he intended to catch himself at the last minute, and Paul waits for the additional “on your knees” that tends to follow.

It doesn’t come. 

Heart rabbiting in his chest now, Paul closes his eyes again and bobs his head. It’s for the best his mouth is full at the moment, because he can feel the mawkish sentiments rising in his lungs. Even in the middle of a blowjob the intrusive thought that they’ve only known each other a little over a day rushes into his mind; but _shit,_ he doesn’t _care_ anymore. On some transcendental level he knows every single person here, so it doesn’t matter that he has some bloke’s cock halfway down his throat because he’s _not_ just some bloke. He’s John—he’s the sun, and Paul understands and loves him and wants more than anything to taste any part of him he can have.

The fingers in his hair tighten before John has both hands on his head, guiding his pace while Paul just keeps his mouth open and welcomes it. And between the hair-pulling and desperation, he nearly gets hard again. Grunting softly, John quickens the thrust of his hips; Paul moans around his cock, presses his tongue firmly against the underside. It’s almost selfish how quickly he wants to get John off, just so he can have the pleasure of tasting him. 

“Paul, Paul,” John mumbles, and God, _yes,_ he never wants to hear his name spoken another way again. With a broken moan he comes hot and thick down Paul’s throat, and he works him through it—swallowing it all until it feels like John has spread to every gelid, untouched place inside of him. 

After a kiss to his hip, Paul fixes John back into his jeans while he recuperates—head leaned against his forearms, which he braces against the tree. From this low angle, knees pressed into the soil and head upturned, he feels like he’s bowed before some omnipotent deity. Not one who absolves sins, but one who encourages them; not one who bids you listen, but one who implores you do not refuse to hear. Squeezing his thighs, so thick they give the trunk of the tree a run for its money, Paul smiles up at him.

“What’re you smiling at?” Johns asks with a lazy one of his own, as though they’re permeating the air.

Truthfully there’s a hundred million reasons Paul can give, but he settles on, “Ringo said you’d call it even on the ride n’ all if I sucked you off.”

John chuckles. “He’s a good mate, him.”

He fully intends to stand up so they can follow the music back to their temporary home, but instead John meets him on the ground and lays out across the earth with his arms outspread like a windflower, pulling Paul with him. 

“D’you wanna head back to the concert?” he asks.

“Not yet.” John turns to him with his eyebrows raised. “Funny thing about ears, they tend to work long distance.” 

Paul grins, teases, “Shame about those eyes, though, eh?”

“Okay, okay!” John gripes playfully with a shove to his arm.

Really, that’s all Paul needs to stay put.

He basks in the afterglow beside John while the music plays as though from his record player two rooms away at home. It isn’t yet nightfall, but the spectral face of the moon, a curious listener, already peeks through the trees. Together they lay under that magical moment where the sun and moon both command the sky at once; a tale of two long-lost lovers scouring cloudy ruins and stardust desolation only to ever catch glimpses of each other at that last generous hour before the end of day and the coming of night. 

The hour of hope.

Soft-voiced, Paul says, “George is in love with Pattie,” and isn’t even sure why those words roll off his tongue. 

“Oh yeah?” John murmurs.

“Mhm. Daft, innit?” 

And he wishes he could just shut up, but the livid sky keeps pulling words from his mouth like pieces of thread. Everything unsaid sits unraveled and loose on the loom inside his throat, ready for spinning. When did he lose so much restraint? 

John turns his head to look at him. “Why?”

“Well…festival’s over in a few days.” His eyes roam over John’s face, committing to memory every freckle and line after such a horrible truth as the one just spoken.

“Doesn’t mean your life has to be.”

But it’ll _feel_ like it is, and that’s the entire fucking problem. Leaving home, he scrambled up all the pieces of an intact, finely executed puzzle. After Woodstock all he’ll have is a picture, probably a few missing pieces, and not a single clue as to where to start back over. 

John pushes a hand into Paul’s hair and looks at him with more sincerity than he’s ever seen in someone’s eyes, so beautiful and brown. It quiets his mind. “We can be like them,” he says, lightly as the whispering trees.

Paul wonders what he’s getting himself into. He’s twenty-seven years old, but feels like a kid again and has no idea how he’s getting away with this. The running away, the chasing of music, the falling in love, mad and fast and on a whim, because in his heart of hearts it’s finally something he _wants_ to do, consequences be damned! And maybe it’s just the way John makes him feel—impossibly old, infinitely young. 

Just like summer.

He smiles.

With the moon and sun as their witnesses, they make a promise to one another right there. For the rest of the weekend they promise to love each other wildly and completely.

**12:13 AM**

The performances are so impassioned and poignant that the sky spreads open like a pair of hands and sheds tears over the audience. When the rain first fell Paul grinned up at the miserable sky in awe, drops kissing his eyelids and cheeks. Since John never finds the point in running from the rain and Paul has always loved storms, most of them stayed put for a few minutes. 

They danced and smiled and rubbed the fresh water between their pink lips. Every time he met John’s eye through the rain beading on his eyelashes, he remembered that promise they made only hours ago, and every time the rain fell harder. 

_You love me and I love you, and I don’t want this weekend to ever end…._

Now they’re all piled in the back of the van in their damp clothes and warm spirits. The van’s side doors have been propped open, so they can still watch Ravi Shankar from within their dry cave; though, they don’t so much watch as _experience._

As the sky throws her tantrum around them with bruise-colored clouds and growling thunder, the man sits like an unmoving shell in a whirling sea, eyes closed and music pouring from the sitar in a downpour of its own. With an equanimity Paul envies he plays through the storm…to the storm…with the storm. 

For the first time since they arrived here, they all sit in silence. A silence that makes it easy to feel born again. And Paul thinks maybe they’re all under some arcane spell—the planets have aligned their dusty reds and oceanic blues in a specific pattern; the sky has split like a gash and bled over them at the perfect moment; Shankar’s song rings out across the land in handspun silver strings at the right time; and now they’re all suspended in a misty haze of enchantment. It’s the only way he can explain the phenomenon of being lost and found all at one, at simultaneously forgetting who he once was and remembering who he wants to be.

Paul tucks closer into himself, hands wedged between his thighs to bring some feeling back into them as the occasional shiver wracks his body. He and John share a thick wool blanket, but it doesn’t help the fact that his clothes are plastered to his skin and his hair is still damp at the tips. From God knows where, John found a yellow bandana that he has tied around his own wet and unruly hair. Heat emanating from his side, he’s a furnace that Paul can’t get close enough to.

“You alright?” he asks quietly as he shivers again.

“Mhm.”

But beneath the blanket he finds Paul’s hands and brings them to his lap, burying them under his t-shirt and between his own warmer hands. Discreetly Paul glances around at everyone else; their eyes are fastened to the music spilling blood at their naked feet like a thing of substance. All is so calm and peaceful that he can hear his breathing thundering in his own ears, and the insecurity, the paranoia of being seen, drips off him in a myriad of unbothered colors. 

In one corner of the van George has Pattie curled up in his lap. Paul sees it clear as day, the temporary love between them unrolling its petals. The fragrance of their intimacy brings a faint smile to his lips. Is that what everyone sees when they look at him and John? Something too raw to touch, something forbidden yet rapturing to behold? 

He wants to crawl over there and kiss George square on the mouth for opening his eyes, for doing everything he had been too afraid to do, and for showing him that it’s never too late to do it. Even more, he wants to kiss every single person in this ridiculous van just for being who they are. It feels like he’s known them for ages—a multitude of lives. He wants to kiss John the longest and hardest and taste every varying shade of himself as though he’d just lived a new life the second before.

The rain patters against the roof like a snare drum, echoing in the quiet van. A strong breeze carries in the fresh scent of wet earth and crackling electricity. Everything and nothing at all is happening all at once. The static, the music, the storm, the quiet. 

It’s the best peace Paul has ever known.

The heavier his eyes get, the more heavily he leans into John, who keeps a hand on his thigh under the blanket. Eventually his head makes a pillow of John’s shoulder and he’s too tired to care about what the others might have to say about it. He could live in this moment forever.

When he closes his eyes, he does.

**3:02 AM**

“Paul.” It’s a distant whisper, music down a windy street; then something shakes his legs, squeezes his foot. “Paul, wake the fuck up, ye lazy sod.”

He frowns and makes a noise lost between questioning and annoyed. His eyes peel apart like two sheets of paper, and it takes a minute to realize John’s arms are no longer wrapped around him. Pushing up onto an elbow, he sees him squatted at the gaping red mouth of their tent. 

“Why’re you up?” he mumbles, voice splintered from a wonderful sleep.

“Can’t sleep. Come out here,” John whispers quickly, then disappears like a shadow into the darkness.

Sighing, Paul pulls his trousers back on and feels his way out of the tent with bleary eyes. The temperature has fallen along with the night, and he crosses his arms over his naked chest. John sits just outside the entrance of their tent, legs pretzeled up into an impressive position with rolling paper on one knee and a sprinkling of pot on the other. 

He sits down beside him with his knees pulled into his chest. “What is it?”

“There,” John whispers, looking up at the sky.

The stars are so white and copious it looks like someone spilled a salt shaker across a black tablecloth—bad luck thrown all across the sky. Paul watches them twinkle as though every few seconds they’re flashing pearly smiles down at them. 

Despite the majesty and wonder, he can’t help but ask, “You woke me up for the bleedin’ stars?”

“Not just any stars.” John looks at him with raised eyebrows and the air of a professor. “These are _American_ stars, you see. Entirely different from the ones back home.”

Paul smiles, rubs his eye. “What’re their names, then?” 

“Well, that one’s Harold, that one there is Numpty—not as bright as the others, you see—and he’s Reginald—”

Shaking his head, he laughs, “You’re a bloody pain, Lennon.”

John smirks and turns his attention back to the unrolled joint. With beautiful, deft fingers he sprinkles the pot onto the rolling paper and curls it up fat and tight. Paul swallows thickly as the tip of his pink tongue drags along the edge of the paper in slow swipes. When John catches him staring he rolls his eyes and smiles around the joint bobbing precariously between his lips. A lighter snicks and the flame dances around John’s jaw, lengthening the already long sweep of his lashes with crisp shadows.

He draws two slow tokes, mouth puckering and relaxing, brings Paul closer with a strong hand on his shoulder, and releases the smoke right into his parted lips. Paul swallows the smoke, feels it penetrate his lungs deeply. The potency of the marijuana slowly evanesces until all he tastes is John on his tongue. They kiss lazily, all curious tongues and nibbling teeth, only making space for the joint to occasionally slip between one of their mouths for a split second.

But the sudden sound of a guitar startles Paul into pulling away.

“John,” he says worriedly, tilting his head towards one of their neighbors, Dink, who is still awake and strumming his guitar. 

At one point the man told them his name, but since none of them remember it they stick to calling him Dink, because “Dink’s Song” is the only thing he plays on his guitar. They theorize that he’s some confused, old war veteran who stumbled into this youthful music scene. His body is frail and wrapped up in a worse-for-wear green army jacket that he never loses despite the sporadic heatwaves; face thin, expressionless, and weathered by the torment of haunting warfare and gunfire. 

“He’s not payin’ us any mind,” John assures him and looks over at the old man. “Oi, Dink, you take requests?”

His dirty, wrinkled fingers never let up on the strings. One of them is missing, Paul notices. Grey eyes look unseeing into the night as he asks, “What you wanna hear, Lemon?”

Similarly Dink has dubbed all of them with their own nicknames and refuses to spare their feelings. Sunglasses. Big Nose. Pretty Boy Floyd, which Paul feels is a bit more generous than being singled out by his hair color as the girls often are. But it brings a grin to his face every time he hears that dry voice snag their attention.

“You know any Cream?”

“Hell yeah, I know Cream. Course I know Cream.”

His fingers stop for a brief second, reposition themselves on the strings, then pick right back up where they left off. 

“Amazing, huh?” John says quietly to Paul, chuckling. Then he turns back to Dink who sits cold and still as a statue, fingers and mouth the only parts of him that ever move. “Yer still playin’ ‘Dink’s Song’ there, mate.”

He shakes his head…shakes his head. “No ‘m not. Playin’ Cream’s song.”

And it’s almost sad how fried the man is, but he always speaks with endless self-assurance. Paul wants to know what he knows, see what he’s seen. A person can’t be as unshakably confident yet glaringly wrong as him without a certain type of tragic existence under their belt.

He keeps strumming softly, murmuring the chorus to himself like a quiet afterthought.

“Sounds great, Dink,” Paul tells him with a smile.

The interrupted sleep finally catches up to him and he yawns. 

Gentle, John says, “You can go back to sleep if you want.”

Paul shakes his head, fights off another yawn. “Real dreamers never sleep,” he answers sagely. His eyes find their way back to the sky. “And anyway, the stars are still out. You never told me the rest of their names.”

A hand strokes the back of his arm, up and down, goosebumps rising like rows of seeds. He feels John’s eyes on him, gentle and red-rimmed, exploding balls of amber that stare at him as though he’s a fallen star. When he lays a kiss upon his naked shoulder, Paul finally turns to look at him.

“I think I figured it out,” John murmurs.

“What?”

A smile grabs his lips. “You _are_ an interesting one.”

Paul is so overwhelmed with several emotions that he can’t even begin to respond. But it doesn’t matter, because, taking one final toke of the joint, John breathes more life into him. He moans low, breathily, as their tongues slide together and his lips do the talking for him. The pot works its way to every loose limb of his body. The kisses traverse down his neck until his back meets the sleeping earth and he’s too stoned to remember the journey down.

Then, out of nowhere, he starts to laugh. 

Maybe it’s the pot or the ticklish kisses or the liberty to love someone out in the open. Whatever it is, it feels good and that’s good enough.

Smiling, John looks down at him. “What?” he asks with a laugh of his own and a hand tenderly raking through Paul’s fringe.

Paul shakes his head, bites his lip. “I dunno.”

“Well shut up, then, yeah?”

John leans down to claim his lips again and Paul shuts up.

Dink takes it from the top and the stars shine on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> by the looks of it summer is gonna end before this fic does, but I won't let that stop me. 
> 
> I'd love to hear what you thought of this chapter and the first if you hadn't read that one yet!
> 
> [beatle blog](https://unchaineddaisychain.tumblr.com) | [primary blog](https://daisychain-unchained.tumblr.com) | [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5O1SoNhja50H5GarabKdxj?si=gmN-SF68SBWZNc5lXtBrlA)


	3. Day Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> congratulations, some of your recent comments have persuaded me to update this fic despite the current winter season. (it wasn't abandoned, I was just gonna hold off on updates). so now it's like the opposite of Christmas in July.
> 
> also I changed the chapter titles just so they would coincide w my research notes. but it's still their third day here and the second *official* day of the concert.
> 
> merry chrimbo and happy new gear. see y'all in 2020

Saturday, 16 August, 1969

**11:17 AM**

“Alright, bread, cheese, water, annnd…fuck me, what’s the other?” John is already asking before they even fully make it into town.

“Meat,” Stuart reminds him, reading from his lipstick-inscribed forearm.

Paul shakes his head with a tsk, tsk. “How could you forget the meat, John?”

“Dunno how it slipped my mind, Paul,” John answers, a smirk tucked into the corner of his mouth.

For a second their pinkies curl together in a loose, furtive tangle and Paul bites his lip to keep from grinning. He quickly sobers and moves his hand away, however, when Stuart cuts them a curious glance. The Saturday morning streets of Bethel are already swarmed with people, and with the three of them trying to share the same stretch of pavement, it only feels more crowded. 

Every time Stuart steals John’s attention, Paul feels like the outsider that he is. Every time Paul steals John’s attention, he feels like he’s encroaching upon something he doesn’t have a right to. Maybe Stuart is skeptical and standoffish with every newcomer, or maybe he just has a particular dislike for Paul.

He just wishes Ringo or Klaus had come along for the supply-run instead.

The bell above the corner store door chimes as they enter. An old woman behind the counter greets them while a snoring old man has his hand frozen on the tuning knob of a radio broadcasting a baseball game. The shop is a little bigger than a shoebox, but it should have everything they need.

With a far from eloquent announcement John beelines for the loo, and Paul heads for the tall rack of postcards by the window. There was a brief moment on the pavement when he saw the payphone sitting outside the shop and considered ringing home just for a note of familiarity in his ear. But then Jim’s disappointment and the barrage of questions leached into the imaginary conversation in his head, and he lost the courage.

Now he flips through small chunks of New York printed onto hundreds of tiny postcards as though they could properly condense everything it offers. His father doesn’t get to hear the impatient traffic and see the reds and blues that ignite the sleeping city and smell the fire that burns from Lady Liberty’s torch. If only he could stuff the entire city into his suitcase and open it up in the middle of his dad’s small sitting room. 

He’s torn between one of the Empire State Building and one of the Statue of Liberty when a hand wraps around the pointy top of the rack. Paul glances up to see Stuart looking at the cards in his hands. With a nod towards them, he asks, ““Havin’ trouble?”

“Oh, erm…not really, just don’t—”

“So what’s your plan with John?” he suddenly cuts in.

Paul frowns. “Eh?”

“What’re you doing after this whole thing’s over? Fuckin’ off?”

He shrugs, shakes his head slightly. “I got as much of a plan as anybody else there.”

“Well, listen,” Stuart says, voice lowering, “John’s expectations of people tend to be too high and he’s always the one who ends up gettin’ hurt. But he’s also a stubborn bastard. And I’ve tried talkin’ to ‘im about whatever it is he’s got goin’ on with you, but he won’t listen to me, so now I’m telling you. Please don’t drag him along.”

Paul almost can’t believe what he’s hearing. He feels like he stepped into an entirely different conversation. The whole time he’s been here, he and Stuart have hardly spoken a word to each other, and now he wants to swoop in as John’s self-righteous mouthpiece when he hasn’t even taken the time to have a proper chat with Paul to even get to know him. 

“So what’re you saying?” he asks defensively. “You think I’m, what, _usin’_ John or somethin’?”

“I don’t know _what_ you want from ‘im.”

“I don’t want _anything_ from him!” Paul argues, a little too loudly, and they both glance to the opposite end of the store. 

John is out of the loo and reading the labels of two different packs of bread in his hand. Earlier this morning he nicked one of Paul’s shirts—breathable and peach-colored with white designs around the cuffs and along the bottom—and arguably wears it better than himself. His hair falls loosely around his shoulders and into his face as he gently bites his lip in concentration. 

Paul is so _gone_ on him, and this abrupt interrogation about his “intentions” annoys the shit out of him. Feels like that stern talking-to fathers always gave before his first dates with a new bird.

“Well, I can’t know that, can I?” Stuart starts again.

Reluctantly he peels his eyes away from John. “But you can take my word for it.”

He sighs and shakes his head, a gambler who doesn’t care for the cards in his hands. “Give me a reason why I should trust you.”

He snorts mirthlessly. “‘Cos it sounds to me like you can’t find one _not_ to.”

And with that he slips past him and takes the postcard to the counter. 

He decided on the Statue of Liberty.

As he stares at her torch, he feels his own ears smoking and almost convinces himself she has risen from the card. Chewing on his bottom lip, he tries to collect himself. But the idea that Stuart has tried to auger his way into both of their heads doesn’t sit well with Paul. They’re grown men for Christ’s sake! They both know there might be consequences and regrets accompanying this sudden weekend love they have, but it’ll be up to them to cross those bridges when they get to them, not anyone else. And the more people wedge themselves between their connection, the more determined Paul is to see it last.

“Oh yeah, that’s just gear, have John grab everything, why don’t you?” John loudly complains from the back of the shop. “You buncha lazy, no-good sods.”

The sound of his sudden yelling startles the sleeping old man behind the counter and pulls Paul from his thoughts. For a fleeting second he considers telling John about his confrontation with Stuart, but ultimately decides creating a division in the group won’t solve anything. 

Sighing, he shakes his head, hopes it will scatter the annoyance.

Hands full of everything they need and then some, John joins him at the counter. “George likes these, yeah?” he asks, flashing a pack of biscuits his friend has constantly devoured while in America.

“Yeah,” Paul answers with a smile.

John adds them to their pile.

The random act of kindness is enough to ease Paul from his funk. Reminds him that above all else his goal is to have a good time and let nothing interfere with that. 

He looks back at his card and quickly writes:

_George and I made it safely. Met some far-out chaps along the way. We’re not actually in NYC at the mo, but they had these handy cards in a shop in Bethel. Concert is fab - turns out we didn’t even need to buy tickets. What rubbish luck! Send my love to Mike as well._

_Paul xx_

“No phone call?” John asks.

“No phone call.”

“Pretty quick message, that.”

Paul shrugs, sticks the stamp in the corner. “Postcard’s only so big, innit?”

He needs much more than one measly postcard to say everything he wants to say.

But John just nods and shrugs as if to say, _Fair enough._

He hands the shopkeep a five to cover everything. Back on the streets he drops the card into a public postbox before they make their way back to the farm. For a majority of their journey silence walks with them, and Paul can’t help but feel he contributes most to its presence. But being wedged between someone he promised to love and someone who questions his motives fucks with his head too much. Every so often Stuart will glance at him with an expression he can’t quite gauge—something suspended between guilt and frustration, maybe. 

He pretends not to notice.

On their way back in, so much is happening in different corners of the field that Paul feels like he’s walking past the scenes of a movie. A cluster of girls standing around staring at the sky and plucking petals from flowers as they repeat in unison, “He loves me. He loves me not,” accompanied by exaggerated smiles and frowns like those on theatre masks. A few feet away from them a man with braided hair conducting a group yoga session that targets deep breathing. Countless different experiences occurring just a stone’s throw away from one another.

The only stop they make is by the camp of some blokes selling acid. The kind marketed by shirtless and spaced-out men for one dollar with a crumbling cardboard sign. And it may very well be a recipe for disaster to purchase psychedelics at such a suspiciously low price, but Paul refuses to be the overly cautious killjoy. 

Approaching the tent with audacious strides, John asks, “‘Ey, what’re you lot sellin’ here?”

Paul steps closer to hear the answer, but slender fingers wrapped around his arm tug him back.

“Look, I didn’t mean to come off like a prick,” Stuart is explaining immediately and quietly, even though they’re well out of John’s hearing range. “S’nothing against you personally, alright? Maybe you _are_ everything John thinks you are and more, I don’t fuckin’ know. But a bloke’s gotta be skeptical when you live a life like ours, y’know?”

With his shades shoved into his hair, his eyes are sober and so _there._ Just as dark as if he’d had them on, but no more barriers. It feels important.

Paul looks down at his dirty feet, brown smudging the webs of his toes. He blinks, the fight gone. “S’alright, man, I get it.”

“John’s me best mate, and I try to look out for ‘im ‘cos sometimes he forgets to do it himself.”

“Right.” Paul himself is no stranger to safeguarding George. Lecturing him just yesterday about falling too fast only to prove himself a hypocrite that same evening. Even if the environment offers a sense of invincibility, none of them are perfect here. “Let’s just…forget about it.”

They shouldn’t be held accountable for the things they do here in this lawless Eden. Paul will be on his way soon enough anyway, so what some enigmatic stranger says to him is no skin off his nose. If only for the sake of adhering to Woodstock’s peace-and-love atmosphere, he can show Stuart the same mercy they showed him as a hitcher on the roadside.

“Soon as you two ladies are done primpin’ yer barnets, I’d love to partake in these here psychedelics,” John interrupts, brandishing a dime bag of flimsy square LSD tabs.

“Why’re you in such a hurry, eh?” Paul teases back, feigning ignorant to the final uncertain glance Stuart gives him.

John tosses an arm around his shoulders, murmurs in his ear, “Baby, I been dyin’ to drop with you ever since we picked you up on the side of the road.”

Heat flares low in Paul’s belly, excitement knotted with a spark of arousal, and he bites his lip. 

Back at their own spread they find everyone gathered in front of George like a tiny audience as he plucks a tune on his guitar from the floor of the van. Sat there like it’s his own stage. It’s a song Paul hasn’t heard before. A soft melody accompanied by half-formed and equally hushed lyrics of, _“Here comes the sun and I say, it’s alright.”_ As they stand like quiet shadows behind everyone, similarly taking in the music, John looks at Paul with an impressed lift of his brows. All Paul can do is ride out the beaming swell of pride that courses through his body from knowing such a talented and gentle soul. Someone who’s never composed a rotten song in his life.

“That’s about it for now,” George tells them all when the chords fade out, his warm smile first greeting Paul’s watchful eyes, then Pattie’s. 

Applause erupts from the small group, and John finally breaks his courteous silence to say over it, “Decent song you got there, son.” 

“Ta. It’s about your piss-ugly van.”

**2:27 PM**

Cross-legged in the grass, John and Paul sit in front of each other with a tab of acid balanced on their index fingers. With the tacit knowledge that something transcendental is about to happen, they smile at each other. _Turn on, tune in, drop out._ Like an exchange of wedding rings, they open their mouths and place the tab on the pink tip of the other’s tongue. Paul has to resist the urge to wrap his lips around the knuckles of John’s long finger and recreate one of the first lust-laden moments they shared. 

Before their promise was ever made. 

And now they wear it on their tongues, tamping the words with a drug that will only elevate this rare connection. 

Latin-inspired beats and a wailing electric keyboard soundtracks it all like the drumroll before some grand revealing. (Or for their case, the celebration of some grand sealing.) A quick number entitled “Savor”, and Paul isn’t sure it’s a song so much as a command. Santana onstage like a distant, black-vested spirit guide, perhaps. 

_Savor it—this time, these memories, these people._ _Savor it all while you still got it._

Paul is in a better headspace than he was earlier. For about fifteen minutes George led them in a meditation session that cleared his mind of the clutter, the earlier irritation in the shops. Got them all prepared for an altered state of consciousness. He remembers John’s deep breathing sounding like waves breaking on rocks and the features of his face resembling the smooth and still water after it regains composure again. He remembers finding Stuart and Klaus’s decisions to stay sober and ensure all of their safety an admirable one. He remembers repeating to himself a mantra of: _Think happy thoughts._

And eventually the drug starts to take effect.

He doesn’t know how long it’s been—time officially starting to crumble by the seconds—but his limbs and body are the first to cave to it, pinning him to the earth with cast-iron weights. Then his organs start to awaken inside of him, demanding his attention in a way impossible to ignore.

He finds himself giggling more as his heavy-lidded eyes scope his surroundings. Checking for any distortions, any sudden, almost imperceivable motion in inanimate objects. But he hasn’t reached that phase yet.

Or has he?

Because the grass. So _green_ and hypnotic and damp with yesterday’s rain, and he smiles as it glides between the slits of his fingers and—is it waving at him? Grinning like a child, he waves back. 

_Silly, silly grass._

“You feel it?” George asks, staring at Paul with placidity and amusement.

For a moment the vibrancy and floral patterns of his friend’s shirt seizes his attention. The flowers, cranberry red with the occasional black-spotted petal staring like an omniscient pupil at him, pulsate rhythmically against the silky pink fabric. Horn-shaped centers moving like trumpets without music. A red-faced and dark-eyed symphony on his chest.

“Yeah,” he finally answers, aware of the sluggish cadence of his words now. “The…the ground is movin’. S’gear.”

“Bloody hell,” Ringo laughs like he can see it too, and when Paul looks at him he snorts with laughter.

Nose and eyes widening across his face as though stretched by some medieval torture device or a child toying with taffy. Oceans parted by a boulder. And the longer Paul watches the elasticity overcome his features, the harder he laughs.

“What’s gotten into Paul, then?” Mo asks, chuckling a bit herself as though it permeates the air now.

“Your—your nose is eatin’ yer face, man!” he manages, and Ringo instantly, self-consciously lifts a bejeweled hand to his face in tentative inspection of the bridge of his nose, searching for what they all see. 

Together they all laugh at nothing and everything. Time slinks past them with a clandestine face.

There’s new music barreling through the field. Or is he only just now hearing it? A full-toned, golden voice from the depthless bowel of a tunnel singing: _Though you are strangers, I feel like I know you. By the way that you treat me and offer to feed me and eagerly ask if I’ll stay for a rest._

And the song feels important, but he forgets to listen because right before his eyes the van e l o n g a t e s, now resembling a bus manipulated by the same hand that shaped Ringo’s face.

The sun is 

M

E

L

T 

I

N 

G 

but the colors run in a slow-motion and sunflower-yellow drip. _(A banana milkshake on a hot day.)_ Somehow he just knows if he were to press his ear to the metal, the colors would audibly _ooze._ Like mash being stirred in a pot or wellies squelching through a bog. It would all trickle down his ears—the colors and the potatoes and the mud—and tangle like gum into his sideboards. 

He almost gets up just to test the theory for himself, until he realizes he’s been on his back this whole time. At some point his body has brought him parallel to the earth, supine against the explorative and tactile fingers of the grass once more.

A hand touches him.

Like the insulation in an attic, an electromagnetic wave coats his entire body, so when John’s skin makes contact with his own—atoms fuzing—he _sizzles, sizzles, sizzles._ Charges up, staticky-haired and bone-buzzed. With sluggish movements he looks down at the place they connect, John’s hand encircling the bend of his elbow, and watches the hairs dance and bend in slow motion. 

“There’s seven levels,” Paul murmurs distractedly as his the hairs on his body sway without his brain.

His skull contracts and expands with every breath, one massive pupil (perhaps trapped in a petal) dilating in rapid switch between darkness and light. Every word spoken reverberates off the walls in his mind. Four versions of himself, each slower in speech than the last. 

_A hall of Paul’s._

“Seven levels of what?” he hears John ask, probably two minutes too late.

He watches the dancers, long-bodied and flexible, on his arm.

“I don’t know every level yet. You have life and death…those are always a level, right? But just when you think they fall in that exact order, you—you know, it all feels like the reverse again. Like maybe life begins at death and every level after that is some… _emergence_ into new life. But it all depends on how dead you are when yer born, doesn’t it? We don’t have the same levels, you and I. Right now I might, y’know, I might be on level two and yer already at five. I’ll bet some people don’t even make it all the way to seven. I’ll bet some poor chaps are stuck in a perpetual three.”

After staring for years at the electricity on their skin, he looks up.

“It all makes sense, dunnit?”

“What does?” John asks, fingers skating over the dancers in a way that makes it feel as though they’re jigging on Paul’s skin.

He blinks. 

Had he not even said any of that…?

“The levels,” he repeats dumbly.

“What levels, love?”

_Love. Which level is that?_

Sighing, he stares up at the sky with the burden of crucial yet arcane existential wisdom weighing on his shoulders. What a relief the earth is at his back to help him carry it all.

“Don’t look at the sun. Look at me.” John’s voice whispers in his ear.

“What’s the difference?” Paul asks quietly, turning away from the austere sun and towards a gentler one. And even though this time the words actually find their way out, John doesn’t seem to hear them. 

Glazed and wide eyes stare back at him, the lone freckles on his face peering out at him like yet another pupil. And Paul hadn’t realized just how many things were watching him at any given time. So many pupils.

“Your eyes,” John whispers in amazement, over and over. “Your eyes.”

He sounds so captivated, looks so awestruck. Paul wants to know what it is—what he sees _(What about my eyes?),_ but when he stares long enough into John’s, he thinks he sees it too. And it’s impossible to look away—impossible not to see himself reflected back. 

John’s hair lengthens and lengthens endlessly down his shoulders. Suddenly Paul wants to bury his hand in those auburn sheaves. Feel their sunshine-warmed roots against the grooves of his fingertips. 

So he does. He sacrifices his fingers to the flames with rhapsodic pleasure.

What was that song about the sun? That Harrison hit?

For an indefinite amount of time they stare at each other just like that; Paul’s hand in his hair, and John’s hand having crept beneath his shirt to lay spread-fingered on the soft skin of his belly. A give-and-take of heat. Paul thinks about retina burns, some warning they were all given about retina burns, and how his are probably those charcoal crisps found in the bottom of a pan by now all thanks to John. He thinks about seven levels and how even if no one heard what they were, things might still be alright in the universe.

Eventually John breaks his monkish silence to murmur, “I could’ve been you in another life.”

“Then who would I have been?”

“You’d be me. You’d be me and I’d be you, and life would be different, but it also wouldn’t be, y’see?”

Paul smiles widely. “I see.”

_There are seven levels and I don’t remember what the last one is, but you just might be it._

**5:11 PM**

It’s lasting too long.

Paul wants it to _stop._ He wants to feel his legs again and absolutely cannot believe hours-minutes-years earlier he was clutching his stomach with laughter at the feeling of being paraplegic. Because now he’s crippled. Trapped in his own body and mind. Escape so distant on the horizon the earth’s curvature engulfs it.

All at once his breathing feels too fast and too slow. Hyperventilating or dying, he doesn’t know. 

The noises around him only make matters worse. Once they were enrapturing to hear, full of substances he had never experienced before. Now they’ve all transmuted into something insufferable and do little more than rankle his nerves.

Astrid’s camera snapping pictures, every click of the lens too loud. Like the dry, grating snick of a match dragging across the folds of his brain for a light it can’t have. _Shick! Shick! Shick!_

Dink in a nearby or faraway (he can’t tell which) place strumming that one broken song like an overlay on top of the music already steamrolling across the land. _Why can’t he find a new fuckin’ tune?!_ His gruff voice usually brings Paul the sort of comfort inherent in a distant relative’s, but now all he hears are demons chortling behind his back. Lurking until the moment he snaps altogether and they can drag him under. Into the death-worms and dirt-blankets.

“John, I want it to stop now,” he moans, mouth dry as though the sweat on his brow has depleted all of its moisture.

For the first time since his trip, his summer lover frowns. Paul hates the distorted corners of it, only ever wants to be the one to draw out a smile. “Hey, hey, you’re alright,” he placates gently, rubbing Paul’s knuckles with a thumb.

“No, no,” he pleads, “‘m _not.”_

His body wracks with another set of chills, and he buries his head in his hands and _breathes_ until the worst of it is over.

He can’t even precisely pinpoint when the trip turned sour. His candyfloss and picturesque world devolved into more sinister hallucinations. The fingers of the grass no longer playful but invasive and bony. The distant playground of the stage he once admired now as confounding and labyrinthine as the inside of his head, only making him feel more isolated in his downward spiral.

Before he knows it, his body has pitched him in half until he’s throwing up in the grass next to him. Fingers clutching at those fingers—holding hands with the earth as a few retches keep him bent. The bile in his mouth is bitter and he spits a few extra times to rid himself of the taste. He’s never got this ill during a trip before, but he knew it was coming. A measured climb that started deep in his guts. He feels a warring sense of relief and embarrassment at having finally emptied himself.

Gently someone places something in his grasp, and Paul grimaces at the harsh crinkle when he squeezes it. “Here,” they say, and it’s Stuart’s voice. A voice that ruined his morning. _Don’t think about that._ “Drink some of this.”

With bleary eyes Paul stares at it. The peculiar swish of it, flowing like quicksand, in the plastic bottle unnerves him greatly. “It’s poison. You’re tryin’ ta poison me.”

“Paulie, it’s just water, lad.” Now the misshapen voice of George; but thank God it’s George. “Do like ‘e says.”

“George? George, I want it to be over. I feel shit.”

“I know, mate, just keep breathin’, alright?” he tries, lightly pressing a hand to Paul’s chest. “Lay down, okay?”

Obedient and desperate for any advice, Paul listens to them. His head moves of its own accord and finds a lap to rest upon. The linen trousers are soft beneath his clammy cheek, and he knows without even looking that it’s John. Fingers rove through his hair and the steady breaths of a stomach rhythmically presses warm skin against his forehead. (When did John take his shirt off? Is he missing clothes too?). He knows he won’t be able to sleep for a while still, but he stays there with his head in John’s lap for long enough to feel like maybe he _has_ dozed off.

“I’m here, Macca. I got you,” John whispers to him, his hand slowly rubbing Paul’s sweaty back. “You’re safe, none of it’s real. Nothing is real.”

He grabs onto those gentle reassurances like his life—his entire sanity—depends on it. And his nightmare doesn’t entirely fade—just settles into that no man’s land between dream and nightmare, where the darkness is neither comforter nor creature, but simply a presence. That omniscient, ancient wisdom from earlier weighs heavier than ever on his shoulders, pinning him to the soil that aches to take him under still.

He shakes his head and squeezes his eyes shut. “I-I didn’t think anything bad could happen here.”

**11:39 PM**

Paul wakes up in the back of the van with John’s jean jacket shoved under his head and a thick blanket draped over him. He turns his face further into the jacket and smiles as tangy smoke and a dab of cologne and that ineffable _John_ smell fills his nose. 

After rubbing his eyes, he checks the time on his wrist and almost feels like he’s tripping all over again by trying to decide which watch is the one for America. He sighs as he realizes it’s almost midnight.

“You okay now?”

Paul cranes his neck to see Klaus sat in the far corner diagonal to his own. His hand moves gracefully with the movement of a pencil on sketchbook paper, shaggy hair nearly covering the eyes that track every smooth glide. They’re the only two in the van, so the soothing scratch of lead on paper fills the space. 

Sitting upright, he pulls the blanket higher up his bare chest. “Er, yeah, yeah, just…sort of had a rubbish trip.”

“You gave John a scare.” Klaus at last glances up from his work to pass him a small smile. “Can’t tell you how many times he’s peeked his head in here now.”

The doors of the van are closed, but Paul can see the darkness outside from the slips in the curtained windows. He has no clue how long his kip lasted (doesn’t even remember when the hallucinations turned into dreams), but it doesn’t feel like it’s been too long. Hearing that John has kept check on him even when dealing with his own trip sends warmth unfurling across Paul’s chest.

“Sorry. That doesn’t usually happen to me, a trip like that.” He pauses, tamping down any residual embarrassment from being the bloke who couldn’t hold his own. More lightheartedly, he asks, “They put you on babysittin’ duty in here, then?”

“No,” Klaus laughs. “Someone had to drag John out of here after he carried you in so he didn’t worry himself to death. And,” he shrugs as he looks back at his paper, “I like to draw where it’s quiet.”

Strewn beside him are several loose sheets from the sketchbook. Crisp lines highlighting strong cheekbones, a guitar delicately drawn in innumerable positions, expressions coming to life on a page just as they do any other time Paul sees them in person.

“S’that George yer sketchin’ there?” With a frown and a fist holding the blanket, he edges closer towards him for a better look. 

“Oh,” Klaus says almost shyly, fingers splayed over the art like new fleshy lines and borders to pull it closer to his bum. “Yes. He…has a very nice facial structure.”

Paul studies the artist for a moment, the admiring curl of his lips as he stares at his own works. It almost looks familiar. Like the same smile Paul has worn himself (and can’t seem to shake) over these past two days. He doesn’t bring attention to it, though. It could be nothing.

“Has he seen ‘em?” he asks instead.

Klaus chuckles. “No, they’re just doodles. Nothing worth sharing.”

“Just doodles, eh? Well, if my doodles looked like that, it wouldn’ta took me so long to book a flight over here.” He raises his eyebrows in earnest when Klaus lifts his eyes. “Yer bloody talented, lad. You should show George, he’d rather dig those, you know.”

“I don’t know,” he says hesitantly. “It’s just practice, that’s all.”

“Where’d all of you find each other anyway? You arty types?” Paul asks, trying to steal more subtle glances of the lead versions of themselves on the papers. One of them seems to show their little group piled in the back of this very van. Based on their positions, perhaps a scene from his and George’s first time inside of it.

“When Astrid and I came over from Hamburg, we met Stu and John around the underground art scene in the city. Kept seeing them in rock ‘n’ roll clubs too before we finally decided we had to figure out what cosmic entity kept bringing us all together.” A chaste laugh leaves his nose and he lifts an eyebrow, tilting his head. “Then again maybe it was just the art and music that did it.”

“And none of you’ve grown tired of it all yet? The city and all the people?”

“John talks about leaving sometimes, just has this itch to constantly _move._ Always unpredictable, that one. But he loves New York, says he feels like it’s where he was meant to be all his life.”

Paul nods, thoughtful. “Think he’ll ever actually leave?” 

“He might leave, but he’ll always come back.”

“I don’t think I’ve fou—”

One of the van doors suddenly opens and John’s searching eyes roam around inside until they land on Paul, and his face breaks into a smile as he crawls inside. “Hey, yer up,” he says with a note of surprise.

He clears his throat. “Yeah, just havin’ a little chat.”

“Oh yeah? Well, sorry to cut it short, but Astrid’s askin’ for you, son,” he tells Klaus, cigarette bobbing between his lips. “Havin’ some artsy fartsy problem out there.”

“No rest for the weary,” he sighs as he neatly tucks away his work in his corner of the van. 

“Ta, mate,” Paul calls after him, earning a smile just before the door shuts again.

John scoots in closer to him, the scent of smoke and summer rain and _John_ meshed into his skin. Paul wants to bury his nose in the crook of his neck and breathe him in for the rest of the night. 

With a squeeze of his knee, his lover asks, “Feelin’ any better? Thought we were gonna have to drag you to a medical tent there for a minute.”

“Oh, yeah, sorry about that,” Paul apologizes for what feels like the fifteenth time. “Usually can hold me own, y’know, but I. I don’t usually trip in such big crowds. Was just too much, I think. Sensory overload.”

“That’s alright. Probably should’ve been of more use, but I was too far out there meself to know my arse from a hole in the ground.”

“Well, I _felt_ like I was in a hole in the ground,” Paul says with a small laugh, though the memory of the slow trickle of soil and flesh-hungry hands of earth, all so realistic, nearly smothers any tinge of humor. He shrugs, knocking dirt from his shoulders. “And anyway, you were plenty helpful. Only so much you can do, you know.”

John passes him the half-smoked cigarette. Quietly reminds him, “You kept askin’ for George.”

“Did I?”

“Yeah, made me feel dead useless, you did. Like chopped liver.” he teases, but Paul doesn’t miss the hint of insecurity. The _you didn’t ask for me._

But at the time, he would have called on anyone in the world just to quell the paranoia oversweeping him. It doesn’t mean John is less important simply because his name wasn’t drawn from the hat. It doesn’t mean on some subconscious level Paul knows that in the phonebook of his brain Harrison comes before Lennon—that in the dictionary of his psyche necessity comes before want, and home comes before love, and dying comes before living. 

It doesn’t mean any of that.

He clears his throat, passes the hot cigarette back over.

“‘M sorry. S’just…I’ve only ever dropped with him around, so I think I needed some familiarity, you know.”

“Don’t be sorry.” John takes his hand on top of the blanket, rubs his thumb over the knot of his wrist bone. “I’m not immune to a few shitty trips myself. Can’t step foot in Greenwich Village anymore without a few nasty memories resurfacing. If that’s what you needed, that’s okay.”

Paul looks at him with sober, honest eyes because fact always comes before fiction. “I’m glad you’re here now. Glad you were there for me then too.”

Then, staring into John’s eyes at that moment, he remembers something. A voice as gentle as a lullaby soothing his mind with grand tales that somehow didn’t seem so unbelievable:

_"There's this story I know about two lads with the same name who meet for the first time. Their names were Adventure and Adventure."_

_"Is it a good story?"_

_Fingers in his hair tightened ever so slightly. "Best one I've ever heard."_

He can’t remember if the conversation really happened or was yet another hallucination—maybe a trippy dream—but he doesn’t ask. 

Instead he leans in to kiss the relieved smile on John’s lips, fingers finding those auburn curls to keep him close. John’s hand rests against his cheek as the kiss deepens, lazy just as it should be after such an exhausting trip. Heat curls low in Paul’s belly as he loses himself for a minute beneath John’s lips and the rain on the roof.

When they scarcely part, he teases in a low rumble, “Did you have yer filthy way with me while I was kippin’?”

“I had a lot of ways with you,” John jokes, lips trailing up his cheek and next to his ear, ticklish. “Not all of ‘em filthy, though.”

Laughing softly, Paul leans into his touch. Smoke and summer rain and _John._

“So who all did I miss onstage?”

After planting a final kiss at his temple, John pulls away to answer, “Only missed some of Grateful Dead. Poor bastards can’t even touch anything without gettin’ shocked ‘cos of the rain. Pretty funny, actually.” He tilts his head towards the doors. “They’re still on if you’re up to watch.”

“Yeah, alright,” he agrees, tossing the blanket off his legs.

John remains still as he watches him grab his own jean jacket to wear and prepare to return to the concert. “Paul?” 

“Hm?”

His eyes, so magnified behind his circular specs, stop Paul from moving any further.

“You oughta stick around after all this is over. Don’t go back to England, stay here with us.” A beautiful, strong-veined hand curls around his wrist, over the two watches. “With me.”

Paul’s stomach drops at the sudden, jolting shift of conversation. He isn’t ready for this; the end is still so far away—they have so much _time._

(Or so he tells himself in all of his summertime naivety). 

Lightheartedly, he tries, “Thought I wasn’t s’posed to be doin’ much thinking.”

His lover smiles, almost sadly. “I’ll make an exception.”

Paul nods, swallows a lump. “Then I’ll think about it,” he says, because that’s as much as he can offer right now.

**2:45 AM**

It’s so dark they can hardly see two inches in front of their faces. Brass horns and a raspy, wailing voice infuses the air with more electricity than the rain could ever hope to bring. Even though the bottomless night enshrouds her, Janis is still a tie-dyed and powerful image onstage. A perfect soundtrack to wild summer nights.

Grinning like a madman, Paul looks over the long stretch of mud and into the mirroring grin of John at the opposite end. Both of them barefoot and shirtless now, trousers low on the vee of their hips. A long-haired and dry mud-caked bloke shouts, “Alright, man, go!” and with a running start they both dive onto their stomachs like penguins, the slick mud carrying them towards the center of the makeshift slide until they meet in the middle.

They nearly knock heads before Paul hastily maneuvers out of the way at the last second and safely lands with his head on John’s stomach and one of John’s arms thrown dangerously close to his groin. Luckily no elbows to the nose or concussive headbutts. The wet mud moves like an extra layer of skin on his cheeks as he laughs uncontrollably. 

The jumping muscles in John’s belly from his own laughter jostles Paul’s head as he yells, “You were supposed to go left, you twit!”

“You didn’t say which left!”

John slaps his thigh, leaving a brown handprint like a tribal marking. Soon enough boyish giggles overpower the music as their hands clutch at slick skin during the playful tussle. Paul wipes a hand on John’s already brown cheeks and dodges thick mud pies that fly at him like missiles in retaliation and positively comes _alive_ in that rain- and music-soaked field.

“Piss off so the rest of us can have a go,” Pattie calls from the spot Paul previously occupied, her hair tied back in serious preparation.

Catching their breaths, he and John lob a few more half-hearted hits before John, unsteadily, gets to his feet first. He extends a hand to Paul. “Truce?”

He grins up at him and takes it. “Truce.”

Smiles refusing to wane, they stand on the sidelines, shoulder to shoulder and occasionally bumping against each other for that coveted contact, as the rest of their mates take their turn. A childlike glee grabs the face of every single one of them who stands at either end of the slide. Even stoic Stuart and laconic Klaus. None of them immune to whatever buried youthfulness playing in the mud coaxes from a person. 

They stay there long enough for it to dry and flake on their skin before John knocks his elbow. Head tipped close and voice low, he asks, “Fancy slippin’ off for a late-night dip?”

Paul smirks and together they slip away from the crowd.

At the pond John wastes no time in peeling off his dirty clothes and tossing them into a pile by the bank. Paul watches, stupid and aroused, as he strips then wades into the water, tan legs and pale bum slowly sinking under the murky water. He realizes this is the first time he’s actually seen the man fully naked. And fucking hell, what a beautiful man. Auburn hair cascading over strong shoulders, thighs and buttocks tensing with every step taken.

Then all of his smooth, hairless chest on show as he turns around, opens his arms to the breeze, and shouts, “What’re you waiting for, then, Macca? Don’t be such a prude about it.”

“I’m comin’, I’m comin’! Just gimme a second, yeah?”

“You gotta be free, love,” he intones, spreading his arms and tipping onto his back as though to sacrifice himself to it all. A dirty but somehow equally righteous baptism.

Paul hesitates. He knows he does. He’s still dipping his toe into all of this free-spiritedness, hasn’t had as much exposure to it as John has. Skinny-dipping isn’t something he’s ever done before. 

But then, with the water scarcely covering his modesty, John slides him a little smirk and teases, “S’alright if you don’t want to. We just prob’ly won't let your smelly arse sleep in the van, is all,” and Paul has always been able to sniff out a challenge like a bloodhound. 

“Fuck you,” is all he can think to say before he’s dropping his trousers and dicing up the water with determined strides. 

“Promise?” John asks, grinning widely and drifting farther and farther into the pond to make Paul work for it if he wants to have a go at him like he so desperately does. 

Once he’s close enough, John splashes him and jumps at him like a cat until both of them go under. Paul squirts a mouthful of pond water at his face once they resurface, earning another splash right in his eyes. So near and naked, it’s impossible to ignore the insistent length of John’s cock occasionally bumping against his thigh. 

“Promise,” Paul murmurs, panting a little as he stares at him with a hunger that now inches into lustful rather than mere playful territory.

Eyes darkening—bleeding into the night—John draws him in by a handful of dripping raven hair and kisses him. Instantly deep and dirty. His spare hand sliding down the plane of Paul’s spine until he can grip his arse, squeeze rhythmically. Moaning, Paul folds his own hands over John’s shoulders, remembers the exact cartograph of the freckles beneath his fingers. They’ve barely even washed off all the mud on their faces and it now runs between their lips, but neither of them cares enough to stop. 

Even this late at night the pond still has a decent number of people roaming around. Some hollering and splashing on the opposite end. But he and John have found their own spot in one of the far corners, hidden by the overgrowth and darkness alike. Beneath the water John hauls Paul closer by the hand on his arse until their half-hard cocks meet between them. 

His kisses traverse to John’s neck as he ruts against him. But the friction isn’t enough. Sliding a hand down John’s wet chest, thumbing over a hard nipple along the way and savoring the pleasured hiss it elicits, he takes them both in hand. With slow strokes he works them to full hardness, his toes curling in the soil beneath his feet at the added pressure of John’s cock alongside his own. The feeling is euphoric; so free and naked and hard from John’s body against his. Why has he never tried this before? He could get off just like this. John’s strong hands gripping his arse, his lips sucking kisses beneath his jaw. 

Just when he thinks he might, John mumbles hotly against his skin, “C’mere.”

And with his thoughts as soaked as his body, Paul follows unthinkingly as John leads them to a small copse of trees off the bank of the pond that offers even more coverage. Against the thick trunk of a maple, John pulls him back into a needy kiss, barely parting to say, “I was serious, y’know.”

Paul blinks, intoxicated by his breath. “What?” 

“I want you to fuck me.”

He nearly moans at those words alone—the telling-and-not-asking order behind them. He swallows and licks his lips, cock twitching in interest. _God,_ he’s wanted this man ever since he fell headfirst into his lap two days ago.

“Have—have we got anything?”

John shakes his head quickly, bringing Paul closer again so he’s trapped between rough bark and soft, naked flesh. “Don’t need it. C’mon, I can take it.”

As though to keep Paul from harping on it further, he kisses him again, tongue stealing all his words with its deft slide. He takes Paul into his hand, wanking him some more with these tight-fisted but too-leisure strokes until he finally has to interject, “Okay, okay,” before he loses it completely. Holding John’s face between his hands, he pecks his lips one last time, then murmurs throatily, “Turn around, love.”

With an enticed smirk John does as told, hands finding purchase around the trunk and legs spread wide. Paul hears him draw a deep breath, anticipatory. He runs a reassuring hand along his side before taking his fingers into his mouth and heavily coating them in saliva. Just as he goes to insert them, John tries, “I said I don’t—”

“Compromise, baby,” Paul says, slowly but steadily slipping them inside and hearing protests die on his tongue. 

With long and dexterous fingers he works him open until John is squirming beneath him. Pressing his forehead against the tree and moaning. So responsive to the stimulation it has Paul biting his lip in pure desire. Just like the first time he sucked John off, he can’t believe they’re doing this outside, where anyone could happen by. He’s never been so spontaneous and rash in his life.

“Fucking hell, Macca,” John whines, head loose on his shoulders and forehead pressed against the tree. Already so gone before Paul has even properly fucked him.

“I’m gonna…,” he warns John, prick in one hand as he positions his tip at his entrance.

In response, a swift nod.

“S’okay if it hurts,” his lover says with a glance over his shoulder at him, grip white-knuckled around the bark of the maple and hair still dripping water onto his face. “Just…get on with it.”

“Don’t wanna hurt you,” Paul murmurs into his skin, lips soaking up rivulets from his freckled shoulder.

He tries to ease himself in slowly at first, the spit coating him not the most ideal lube. John curses quietly, and Paul almost tells him they can just suck each other off, save this for another time. But he’s too far gone himself to stop now. His breath snatches at the tightness that steadily engulfs him. He takes a moment to recover it once he’s finally in, allows John to adjust. But _God,_ his body feels absolutely _made_ for Paul’s—carved out of the same star as his own. 

As he sets a rhythm, Paul finds himself whispering, “Love you.” 

Doesn’t even have the audacity to feel daft for it.

John hums in response, arching back to meet every thrust. An answer Paul will gladly accept, which he lets him know by picking up the pace. And John _scrabbles_ for the tree, nails biting into the wood with an audible scratch like tiny axes. 

“S’that good, love?” he prompts, throat dry and grip tight.

“Yeah, you can—harder.”

“Like that?”

 _“Christ,_ yeah,” John moans and reaches down to tug on his leaking cock.

As Paul cants his hips, driving in deeper, he grabs a handful of John’s thick curls and angles his head for a kiss—a sloppy and filthy one, one they can barely maintain from their crescendoing rhythm. He knows the exact moment John is close, because the kiss becomes more teeth than lips and neither of them last much longer. 

“Babe, mmm, _fuck—”_ and then he simultaneously spills across the tree and clenches around Paul’s prick like a goddamn vice. The come-covered trunk and Paul’s unwavering hold are the only things that keep John on his feet.

Three more deep drives into his spent body and Paul topples over the edge right along with him. The orgasm surfaces from deep in his belly as he comes, seemingly endlessly, inside of John. Moaning loudly, teeth sinking into the curve of his shoulder, and fingertips bruising his loose, slender hips. He rides the high as long as he can before he finally has to pull out, soft and sated. 

He rests his cheek between John’s sticky shoulder blades, scratching days’ worth of stubble across his soft skin. Parted lips smear lazy kisses there. He breathes in the newest smell of come and maple leaves and _John_ in the air. Both of them pleasantly filthy all over again.

If John asked him again, right here and right now in this witching hour of 3 a.m., Paul would run away with him in a heartbeat, without a second thought. 

A hand blindly feels around until it covers the small of Paul’s back. Fingernails gently grazing up and down and scattering chills up his spine like tossed jacks. 

“Love you too.”

**5:03 AM**

“Everybody must get stoned!” they all shout, and the joint finally makes its way back to Paul.

Giggling like a schoolboy, feeling the high start to stretch its legs in his body, he pulls a long toke. And yeah, pot will always be his most reliable drug of choice, he realizes pleasantly. With another ritualistic cry of, “Everybody must get stoned!” he passes it off to John, who’s spread out like a cat with his head in his lap. 

Yasgur’s farm sees the most people it has over these past two days. All of them are forced to sit practically on top of one another now to make room for the steady influx of new arrivals. Not that Paul minds the forced intimacy, of course. His hand rests comfortably on John’s sternum, covering his heartbeat.

The sky is creeping closer to dawn now, but it’s still so dark out that all he can see is Pete Townshend’s white arm spinning like a windmill and Roger Daltrey’s fringed arms slashing through the air like whips. It’s a shame he can’t see all the theatrics and shenanigans he’d hoped to see at his first Who concert, but the massive stage lights offer a good enough show. Even as his eyes grow heavy from the spliff and the day’s excitement, he refuses to miss their act.

Though, he can’t quite say the same for John. The hand roving through his hair seems to have sent him into a doze. Gently scratching his scalp, Paul tells him, “You’re missing the show.”

“No ‘m not.” He smiles as his eyes sliver open. With an air of magic he waves his fingers in front of Paul’s face. “Show’s right here.” 

Rolling his eyes, he traces a finger down John’s aquiline nose. “Soft lad.”

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Stuart speaks up from across their half-formed circle.

“What is?” Ringo asks lazily.

“Somebody died here today and we’re all just carryin’ on.”

Until now, Paul hadn’t even thought about that unfortunate bloke. Bundled up in his sleeping bag for shelter in the middle of the field when a truck transporting sewage drove right over him. One minute here and then gone in an instant. That was early this morning and none of them dwelled on the news for too long. 

Closing his eyes, John groans loudly. “Fuck me, Stuey’s gettin’ all existential on us again. Keep the grass away from ‘im, lads.”

“Fuck off, I‘m not,” he gripes when Mo tries to pry it from his fingers. “None of you’ve talked about it, is all.”

She finally wrestles the joint from his hold and instead hands him a retort of, “‘Cos it’s a right buzzkill.”

“People die everyday,” Pattie offers, the casual tone only furthering her point. “What’s different about this one?”

“Well,” he shrugs, “it happened _here._ They said three days of music and peace. Not music, peace, and death.”

“Alright, man, that’s a bit extreme,” Ringo laughs. “It was just an accident. Nobody ran over ‘im on purpose.”

“He’s right, you know,” Paul adds after a handful of seconds spent absorbing it all, and feels the quick pivot of John’s head against his thighs. You’d think his words upended the entire concert.

Looking up at him with inquisitive eyes, John asks, “Is he now?”

“Yeah, I mean. Poor bastard could’ve been any of us. Just something to…consider.” 

He chooses his words carefully now.

John is quiet for a beat, still staring up at him. Like maybe he’s allowing Paul a chance to breathe before he pokes holes into everything he said. But then, unexpectedly, “I’ll consider considering it.”

Unable to suppress a smile, Paul pushes at John’s face, at that cheeky smirk. Loves how it still comes back to him despite it.

“And I’ll consider not havin’ a kip under the van,” George teases.

They all laugh and it dissipates whatever somber cloud has hovered over them.

But it doesn’t last long.

Just then, right at the end of “Pinball Wizard”, a sudden blustering erupts onstage. Paul recognizes the voice to be Abbie Hoffman’s, forcing its way into the music for the sake of his political agenda. Shouting something about John Sinclair that he can only half-discern from the uproar of the crowd. The interruption is brief because they quickly manhandle him off the stage, but it’s enough to get Townshend’s temper flaring with a heat whiter than his jumpsuit. 

“The next fucking person that walks across this stage is gonna get fucking killed, alright?” he threatens over the speakers, and the crowd goes mad for it. Still so ready for war in a place of peace.

“Bloody hell,” Stuart murmurs in disbelief.

“He’s got the right idea, just shit timing,” John says with that same tone used during his first speech to Paul about the ownership of music. “If that’d been a machine gun in Sinclair’s hands instead of a joint, they’d be givin’ him a medal of honor, not ten years in prison.”

Nodding, Paul can’t help but agree, “If you’re not at the top, you’re always at the bottom. Bastards can’t wait to lock up all the poets and musicians.”

“They’re the only voices that really know how to get a message across.”

“C’mon, man,” George laughs, so stoned his red eyes nearly water with it, “Hoffman should know Pete’s the wrong bloke’s set to fuck with.”

Ringo snorts. “It’s Moon he should be worried about too, the wild bastard. A barmy fuckin’ bunch, they are.”

Wearing a wide grin, John turns back to Paul while the others blather on about outrageous rockstar antics. And Paul doesn’t know why he says it. If he looks spooked by the onstage outburst, he doesn’t mean to. Maybe John thinks all of the commotion of the day is stacking up against him—morning arguments and casual deaths and bad trips and threats between sets—and merely wants to reassure him.

“I know America can seem like a big bad wolf at first,” he says quietly, “but I promise you…you ain’t gonna die here.”

But dying isn’t the concern. Finally _living_ is what’s scaring him.

Running his fingers through John’s hair, Paul settles on joking, “You’ll protect me, will you?”

“Stand by me and I’ll always have your back, love.” He shoots him a wink, waggles his eyebrows. “And your front.”

In his mind he hears a medley of “Sparks” and “Amazing Journey” and “Acid Queen”—all anthems of this entire adventure so far. Songs he’ll never hear the same again when he hears them outside of this field. Songs that will have a far-off, tin-can quality when they crackle through the radio because no version will ever trump the moment he heard them live here and now. With John’s head in his lap and his smile stretching across his face like a premature dawn.

And all the while Paul gazes at him, soft and a touch longingly, while knowing they only have one more day together…knowing his courage will end when the music does.

Leaving John behind will be one of the hardest fucking things Paul has ever done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope the acid trip didn't muddy (lol) this chapter too much. I cut it a bit short from the amt of time a normal trip would probably last bc I didn't want that to be the entire focus of this chapter. I def used the opportunity for some creative liberties, though. and that "seven layers" nonsense was taken from Paul's first experience of getting high.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading! leave a like or comment if you enjoyed. I'm taking my time to make sure this one is as good as I envisioned it, but I'm really hoping it won't take too long to finish. fingers crossed!
> 
> [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5O1SoNhja50H5GarabKdxj?si=pAmtSfhWTpSEahGnzKLlpQ) || [primary blog](https://daisychain-unchained.tumblr.com/) || [beatle blog](https://unchaineddaisychain.tumblr.com/)


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